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