I'm all about the music

So it’s June and festival season is upon us.  Next week is the major event – Glastonbury – and every magazine and newspaper is publishing festival guides and listings.  My friend posted such a guide from the Telegraph on his Facebook page (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/8539481/Top-ten-festival-tips.html) and branded it ‘by far the worst list of festival do’s and don’t’s of all time’.  I tend to agree with him since this man’s advice reads like a mother’s list of suggestions as to what to take on you first school camping trip.  I would start my guide, in fact, with the advice to ignore every suggestion that this man provides and instead, to consider these ideas…

1.       You will get urine, and possibly worse, on your legs and feet at some point during the festival.  Your own or someone else’s. And you can’t easily wash this off. Get used to this idea, accept it, move on. 

Wellies and flip flops are therefore optimum footwear for a festival since they are a)waterproof and b)disposable.  Do not wear your favourite roman sandals and expect nobody to urinate directly onto the back of your legs during Blur’s set.  I speak from experience.

2.       Don’t bother planning anything beyond the next 2 hours.  You won’t do it.  You’ll be having too much fun doing whatever you’re already doing.

3.       By all means dress up – but consider the long-term implications of your outfit.  By this, I am not alluding to the ‘embarrassing photographs’ that Mr. Telegraph describes (he should be more worried about embarrassing articles he submits for publication) but, rather, thinking of the time when a friend dressed up as a lobster for Bestival and sprayed his face and entire body post box red using car paint.  Not a great look for work the following week.

4.       If you’re driving to Glastonbury, take a sat-nav and the minute you hit the queue, take the back roads.  Saved us 11 hours of queuing last time…

5.       In terms of vital equipment you will need:

a.       An abundance of wet wipes – an obvious suggestion perhaps, but for the volume I am advising.  An ABUNDANCE I say. You can use them to wipe your butt, the port-a-loo seat, wee off your feet, face-paint off your face, melted chocolate off your rucksack and dirt from under your fingernails.  Plus, people will love you.  You think they want your alcohol / food / drugs / money.  They don’t.  They want your wet-wipes and will do all sorts of things for you in order to obtain just a couple.

b.      A  bumbag to carry your wet wipes , money and your phone (which you will definitely need on occasion).  I know, I know – bumbags are for ‘Dickheads’ of the East London variety.  But they are essential for a festival since they a)leave your arms free for dancing / eating / using port-a-loos / crowd-surfing and b) (unlike rucksacks) you can see them at all times.  Also, if you get one with lots of pockets like I have, you feel a bit like Batman or Bob the Builder.    

c.       Something to carry huge amounts of water in to keep in your tent.  Again – slightly obvious – but I’ve seen the looks of envy as I’ve queued up for 3 hours for water, with the worst hangover of my life, amongst people with a meagre empty coke bottle to fill.  They will have to go back again and again – I will only have to visit the tap once.  NB. As with the wet-wipes – people will want your water.  Make sure you hide it well and only dish it out in exchange for chocolate bars, drugs or offers to go and get you a bacon-butty when you feel you may die.

d.      Pepperamis, Tracker bars, cash, a blanket, a wind-up phone charger, stupid sunglasses, a stupid hat, sun cream, toothpaste and condoms.  Although sex after day 2 is only for the brave or those without any concerns about hygiene.

6.       Stuff you will not need:

a.       A stove.  Don’t bother – food at most festivals is amazing and you will succumb to paying for it.  Unless you are going to Sziget in Budapest, where each dish is seasoned with a tablespoon of salt, one type of meat is indistinguishable from another and vegetables are rarer than unicorn’s turds.

b.      Hair straighteners.  My friend Jenny did bring a pair to Benecassim, along with a hair-dryer, and put them to good use.  But she is the exception that proves the rule. If you are concerned about the state of your hair at a festival, or your appearance in general, you are not having enough fun (see above photograph of me sporting 1990’s bandana as proof…look how much fun I’m having).

c.       Band t-shirts.  You wouldn’t turn up to watch your footy team in another team’s shirt would you?

7.       If you do not have a bath at home, arrange use of one for your return.  Not because it gets you any cleaner but, like adding milk to Coco Pops, there is something rather satisfying about the degree to which the water turns brown on entry.

8.       Finally – book the day after the festival off work.  You will need it and be damned smug about it when all of your festi-friends bemoan the fact that they have a 9am meeting the following day. 

Friends – I am interested in your festival-suggestions….  Together we can produce the ULTIMATE guide…let me know below…

Stuff I liked this week

Erm…this is well-written: http://www.theglassmagazine.com/forum/article.asp?tid=2759#title

Is this an orange?

So the Apprentice is back.  I’ve missed a few series, but I sat down last night and have now added it to my Sky+ recording schedule for hangover / post-Easties viewing.  Where do they find these people? I know it’s a fairly obvious question to ask, but nobody seems to be able to answer it for me or point me in the direction of anyone like them. 

Do people really exist who work for a ‘major accounting firm’ yet cannot identify an orange?  I’d understood that the orange had been commonplace in household fruit-bowls for a few hundred years now, but perhaps that’s a middle-class delusion. 

Perhaps my familiarity with the citrus family is down to my comfortable upbringing or due to my unusual surname.  Perhaps I’m being unfair and nobody has ever sat down with last night’s loser Edward and explained to him what an orange looks like, or told him how good it tastes.

I don’t believe for a second, however, that nobody has ever told him that he is a mouthy little tw@t.

In fact, I’m quite sure that each and every one of the contestants has, at some point or other, been told in no uncertain terms that their very presence is offensive.  Yet still.  There they are.  On my tv.  Telling me they’re the best.  Making me record them out of morbid fascination.

I am better than all of them.  Which does not necessarily make me a good business woman or a fantastic person to get stuck in a lift with.  But I am definitely better than them.  And, the likelihood is, so are you.  You know what time breakfast is right?

I would go on The Apprentice myself were it not for the fact that I have a (slightly) more reasonable self-image than they do.  I understand that my prowess as a sales-woman at the Brownies annual jumble sale does not make me the next Alan Sugar, and the fact that people do not vomit when they pass me in the street does not make me good-looking enough for television. 

I’m sure some of you will defend them, as they do themselves in the ‘Boardroom’, by referencing their successful sandwich businesses or invention for a nail-file (now available in Boots).  But if they are such fantastic entrepreneurs, why do they need Lord Alan? 

If it’s for the 6-figure salary, then they will have been sorely disappointed when he changed the goal-posts last night, offering a prize of a measly £250,000 injection into a business that they will have to partner with him.  LOL.  Did you see their faces?  I saw tears.

Anyway…I will be tuning in tonight for the next instalment….

Stuff I liked this week

Bit geeky.... http://flowingdata.com/2010/12/30/the-joy-of-stats-available-in-its-entirety/

Not unrelated….this guy presents data about himself in a beautifully designed annual report: http://feltron.com/

Fat Bottomed Girls

So I’ve been cycling to work since Christmas.  I haven’t managed the 5 times a week that I listed in my new year’s resolutions.  But I definitely cycle at least a couple of times a week and sometimes three times. 

So far it’s going quite well.  I am not ashamed to admit that I am a little bit out of shape and that my short ride from Stockwell to London Bridge tires me out a little. When I initially started to cycle, my face-colour on arrival at work was akin to a surprised, embarrassed Ribena berry.  Now it is more like that of a toddler’s face, post-tantrum, complete with snot.

Boris’ magic blue road takes me more-or-less door to door and every morning (well..those mornings when I cycle) I come to the end of my road and plunge head-first into the hoard of cyclists on their commute. 

There is a kind of natural order of things on the road.  It’s a bit like the mosh-pit at a rock concert – you can start out right at the front, but unless you’re really determined to stay there, you will inevitably end up further and further back, depending on your love of the band and your attitude to personal space. 

Similarly, if you are cycling, you can stay at the front of the pack if you are super-fit, riding a racing bike and in a hurry.  I am none of these things and therefore happily pedal along in the middle, ahead of the elderly and those whose drainpipe jeans are restricting their movement / blood circulation.  I amble along behind those with fixies, shiny lycra outfits and, if I have anything to do with it, boys with big muscular bottoms.

There’s always one though isn’t there?  Someone with (as my brother would put it) all the gear and no idea.  Or someone who just wants to beat you.  There is one such girl who I come across a couple of times a week.  She usually turns up just by Stockwell station before embarking on a valiant campaign of overtaking, slowing down to the pace of a snail with a stitch, forcing me to overtake her and then overtaking me again. 

She is very small and feeble.  Each time she overtakes me, I have to force back my laughter as I watch her determined head bobbing up and down whilst her weak little chicken legs furiously pedal her enormous bike in front of me.  Within seconds of reaching her goal, she begins to flag and I find myself close enough to tickle her massive mud-guards.  And so we continue. 

What makes it particularly amusing is that I know what is going through her head each time she fires up the engines.  The same thing that is going through my head when Michelle McManus’ fatter sister is waddling along in front of me, her bike actually creaking with the effort of supporting  her…

…. “I can take her….I can take her.”

But I have quickly learnt that you must never under-estimate the power of the lard-ass.  In a triumph of natural engineering, underneath that mass of wobbling flesh is a pair of thighs which have been trained to bear and ferry a weight up to 10 times their size.  A little bit of cycling is a welcome break to the every-day load-bearing duties. 

Oh yes – Freddie Mercury knew what he was talking about – in the cycling world, as indeed in many spheres, Fat Bottomed Girls are the way forward.

Stuff I liked this week

You won’t find me in here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13200114

Am I bovvered?

I am pulling my ‘Am I bovvered?’ face. I have been pulling my ‘Am I bovvered?’ face for a little while now. Although it is starting to veer towards a slightly incredulous and irritated ‘Are you frickin’ serious?’ face.

My friend Robin’s FB status this morning read “Robin is getting excited about getting married on Friday. No wait…that’s not me is it?”

Robin makes an excellent point. If it was Robin getting married on Friday, I might be bovvered. If he was going to don a pair of 4 inch bridal heels and totter up and down the aisle of Westminster Abbey (or wherever it is) in front of millions of TV viewers across the globe, I might tune in for a giggle…although the novelty of Robin in heels is wearing off.

It’s not the cost that bothers me. There are a couple of other things I might consider cutting before Kate and Wills’ Big Fat Hello Mag Wedding got the chop. I’m sure we could recoup a few pennies from the weapons pot or from the the Pope’s state-funded holiday pot for example.

But Kate’s face in a jellybean? Really?

What is everyone getting so worked up about? There seems to be lots of chat about ‘uniting the nation’ and how important the monarchy is to our country and it being ‘an important historic event’. I could spend some time here making a convincing argument as to why I don’t believe these things to be true…but..well..I can’t be bovvered.

I thought I might try to escape the lunacy in London and so suggested to my sensible French mum that I might go and see her in Cambridge for the weekend. I thought I might do some gardening.

“‘Don’t you want to watch the wedding?” she asked…

“..Woman! I get 20 odd days of holiday PER YEAR. And I have just been given another one. My holiday allowance has been increased by, like, 5% (if my maths is wrong here, don’t write, I’m not bovvered). Do you really want me to spend an entire DAY of my holiday allowance…nay…an entire DAY of my LIFE watching a pair of toffs that I don’t know (I don’t care who says she’s not a toff – she hasn’t seen the inside of Peckham Asda) getting hitched?

I mean…people mock me for spending 25 minutes here and there watching Eastenders. The BBC are showing the Royal Wedding from 8am to 10.30 pm, with only a couple of toilet breaks. That’s TEN HOURS of coverage. I could watch 24 episodes of Eastenders in that time. That’s 6 weeks’ worth. Imagine what could happen on Albert Square over 6 weeks?

In the last 6 weeks, Whitney has gone from happy teenager to vodka-swilling, drug-addled, gang-bang hooker and back to happy teenager again. All Wills and Kate have to do is walk 50 metres (again – if this figure is wrong, I don’t give a flying fiddlestick), say “I do” and a couple of other things and then walk back again. I mean…people complained that the opening sequence of ‘Saving Private Ryan’ was too long. It lasted 20 minutes. Jordan Price has had shorter marriages.

I do wonder what Kate's dress will be like though…



Stuff I liked this week

I’m going to try and get a word onto next year’s list.. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2006/oct/12/bovveredwinsw1

Things have moved on a step from when you sent texts to your nun: http://damnyouautocorrect.com/

(Photograph courtesy of my friend Petra)

'cause my name is Lemons, innit?

Yes yes. I realise it’s been a while and you’ve all been terribly worried about me / impatient for news. And no, it hasn’t taken me all of this time just to choose which colours to make the title on my brand-spanking-new blog page. Although that did take an in-ordinate amount of time and I ended up having to ask one of the graphic designers that I sit with to choose the colour for me. I did design the background though – my ‘wallpaper’ if you will. You like it? It has Lemons in it – cause my name is Lemons innit? Before I launch back into my blog I feel it’s only fair to give those of you who read regularly a quick update on the happenings in my life:

1. Nathan has gone to live in Dubai. Woe is me. I've learned to use Skype.


2. Big Tone (my Dad) has lost 3 stone. He is now to be referred to as Tiny Tone.


3. Bookshop man has sold me approximately £800 worth of novels which I have not read. I have still not plucked up the courage to ask him out.


4. I cut my hair off. Disaster. Not as bad as the time when a kiwi woman took the clippers to my bonce, but a close second.


5. My housemate moved out. I cried for a week. He took the TV and I was forced to invest in a new one in order to maintain my addiction to Eastenders.


6. I have a new housemate. In the 5 weeks since he 'moved in' he has slept in his bed 4 times. He has 2 grammy awards though, so he can do whatever the frick he likes.


7. Did I mention that my flatmate has 2 grammy awards? Unlike my old flatmate, who has no grammy awards.


8. Ronnie stole Kat's baby and passed it off as hers after her own baby died in a cot death. She hasn't given it back yet.


9. I convinced myself that I had finally met the new Mr. Lemons. Turns out he fancied my friend.


10. I was referred to by one of my colleagues as resembling a 'maturing piece of Stilton'. I'm hoping he wasn't referring to blue veins.

Now....read on for my latest post....You'll find it on the menu on the right (instructions for my Mum), along with an archive of all of my posts from the Urban Elite site.

You’re my number 2

When I was a teenager and well into my early twenties, there was a whole portion of the English language which I felt was completely alien to me. Not just alien, but meaningless, lacking substance, clichéd, useless and, frankly, dull. Vocabulary and terminology reserved for people who read women’s weeklies, people I overheard in hairdressers and the audience of ‘Ricky Lake’ (Go Ricky, Go Ricky). Stuff like “I need some me-time” or “What star-sign are you?” or “I’m not in the mood, I have a headache” or “I can’t, I’m working tomorrow” or “I’m tired” or “That’s men for you” or “I don't want to ruin my shoes".

One such phrase which filled me with horror and caused me to flinch whenever I heard it was: “He has commitment issues”. Every time it was uttered, my head would be filled with images of shackled men, forced down the aisle to the sound of the funeral march, leaving behind a gaggle of fun-loving, laid-back mates and entering into an eternity of servitude filled with double-dates, baby-puke, Saturday nights in watching ‘Take me out’ and trips to Ikea. But whilst star-signs and lying to get out of sex remain obscure and laughable concepts, the whole ‘commitment issue’ thing is starting to have some resonance in my own life.

It first came up way back when I was 17. That summer I went on a camping holiday in France with my older brother, his friend Sam and my friend Therese. Terri and I were supposed to share one tent and Chris and Sam were to share another. Hours after landing on Gallic soil, however, and presumably spurred on by the dulcet tones of the language of love being spoken around them (or is that Italian?), my brother and Terri lost control of themselves and, breaking all rules of propriety, got it on. And so, it fell to me to entertain Chris’ friend in their absence.

So we put up what was now ‘our tent’, played a couple of games of travel-scrabble and took a quick stroll to the beach. After which, lacking any kind of imagination, Sam and I got it on too.

My 6-month relationship with Sam was a fun-filled whirlwind of drinking, laughing, competing at board games and day-time-tv. When he disappeared off for his first year at university, his penchant for alternating cheesy love letters with fake letters from solicitors or enrolment forms for TV-quiz shows suited me fine and I was very happy indeed. It was with great disappointment then, but still a little amusement, that I received a phone call from Sam in the Christmas break asking me if I wanted to be his girlfriend ‘just in the holidays’.

‘Erm…no I don’t’.

After the momentary irritation had worn off, I quickly bounced back and got into the swing of it again. The swing of it, however, seems to entail a preference for the short-term or part time. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a couple of ‘proper’ relationships since then, but aside from them (well..not even aside from them), there seems to be a lot of people attempting to have their cake…and eat it too.

And I’m not just talking about sex here people. No, no. Would I be so crass? (Probably). I have a number of male friends (5 off the top of my head) who have explicitly told me ‘if I didn’t have a girlfriend / wife / boyfriend then I would definitely be with you.’

Thanks. Very useful information. Not irritating at all.

And now I’ve come to the point in my life where I’m almost thirty. And everyone around me is almost thirty. And ‘commitment issues’ are being cited on a daily basis from friends and friends of friends and now..from my own mouth.

I am currently seeing a man with ‘commitment issues’. There. I said it. So deeply entrenched are his CI’s, that he will read this blog post (yes, he reads my blog) and take issue at my use of the word ‘seeing’. The word will ring his ears like an alarm bell screaming “she’s got the wrong idea, she’s got the wrong idea”. Since - and let me be completely clear about this – I am NOT his girlfriend and, in spite of the fact that we have been in one another’s lives for coming on 2 years now, he is DEFINITELY NOT my boyfriend.

Bleugh. ‘He’s got commitment issues.” “And his dinner’s in the dog and she could do so much better than him”.

Or maybe he just doesn’t like me.

Oh god. I’m an Eastenders wife. I’m on the panel of Loose Women. I’m a Hollywood mother-in-law. Save yourselves…it’s too late for me. I’m going to turn into one of those women who moans about how fat she is all the time and how she never meets anyone nice and then wonders why nobody wants to sleep with her. I’m going to turn into one of those women who updates her Facebook status at hourly intervals with dreary details of their mundane existence. I’m going to become one of those women who writes a moany, bitter, man-hating blog. Shit.

Stuff I liked this week

Wicked little cinema that my friend and I stumbled across: http://www.aubincinema.com/

I can already speak French, but if you can't: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA5CMtQDyP4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Status Snob

The perfect Facebook Status. The very idea seems to be something of a contradiction in terms, since the coolest people that I know don’t tend to update their statuses at all. In fact (if they are even on Facebook) they live on it in a void of anonymity, detagging themselves in photographs, never responding to messages or invitations and retaining the same, slightly artistic, probably abstract, profile picture for years on end. I would think that they never went on it, were it not for the fact that they continually make snide remarks about my penchant for changing my status or uploading photos of myself drinking rum. Changing your status is NOT, apparently, cool.

There are some people, however, whose status updates, whether regular or occasional, never fail to make me happy. And by that, I mean laugh out loud. My friend Steve, for example, uses his status as a means to vent his frustrations on how incredibly stupid and tedious most people and things around him are. An example:

“Facebook is recommending James Corden and Linkin Park to me. Either their recommendation algorhythm is in need of some work, or I have inadvertently ticked the facebook setting ‘I am a giant cu*t’ ”

And my friend Jenny, brazenly uses her status to promote whatever brand she is 'PR-ing' that week:

"Jenny loves Endsleigh Insurance."

Sure you do..

Another friend, Oliver, documents his life like a bitchy Carrie Bradshaw, ripping strips off anything and everything and shamelessly extolling the virtues of daytime TV and celebrity spotting:

“Inception. So bad there aren’t enough words in the dictionary to do justice to its horrendousness. Never before have I been subjected to such pretentious mindless w@nk. Always knew I didn’t like that Leonardo or that Ellen. I could have spent my money on a j-lo rom com. Worst film ever.”

I appreciate a bit of moaning. A bit of humour. I like to change my status. And I like reading other people’s status changes. I like to know what you’re up to. That is why I’m on Facebook (that and stalking). But there is a fine line between what I think is interesting and what I think is mundane. Some of my ‘Friend’s’ Facebook statuses read like a monkey’s timesheet:

7.06: “Just woken up, feel like scratching my butt”

7.16: “Scratched my butt”

7.23: “Butt still itchy, contemplating scratching it again”

7.48: “Think I’m gonna go for it, really excited about second butt scratch…etc”

Worse still are those who, not content with documenting their own bowel movements, instead choose to let me know what their kid just did / said / is:

8.38: “Wow, managed a lie-in today, little Jeronimo slept right through…bliss”

9.12: “Watching Peppa Pig with Jeronimo. So cute.”

10.06: “Jeronimo just ate a whole banana”

10.41: “Jeronimo is breathing and blinking at the same time. Genius”

GIVE A SHIT?! No. I. Don’t.

I don’t care if you’re doing the ironing. I don’t care if you’ve just been to the gym. I don’t care if you ate a cake, baked a cake or are a fruitcake. And unless your dog can do the can-can, or perform Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’ in its entirety, whilst smoking a joint of its own rolling, then I don’t care about it.

The trouble is, yesterday, I got a kitten. And I feel the need to talk about it. On Facebook. It’s so cute and furry and so unconditionally loving…and this morning, it tried to get into the shower with me and I love it when it follows that little mouse on a string and….

…shoot me.

Stuff I liked this week

I met this girl in real life yesterday. She rules: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/UNIQUE-AWESOME-INTERNET-BEST-FRIEND-SALE-/120595162469?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item1c14082565

PRMitton. Obsessed with sport, cupcakes, Notts Forest and vino: http://twitter.com/PRMitton

Congratulations to Urban Elite's very own Jeff, who got married last weekend! Whoop!! x