A recent conversation with my daughter went something like this:

ME: I quite like Rihanna’s music.
DAUGHTER: WHY??????
ME: Er … because it’s good?
DAUGHTER: OH MY GOD I HATE YOU!!
ME: Oh what have I done now??
DAUGHTER: YOU CAN’T LIKE IT. IT’S NOT FOR OLD PEOPLE. WHY DO YOU WANT TO BE COOL!!!!!!

OK so two things here. One: there’s some sort of age cut off point for musical tastes that I didn’t know about so I’m guessing I shouldn’t be listening to anything beyond Spandau Ballet or Wham. Two: I am mum. Not Carrie. Mum doesn’t listen to hip trendy garage or R&B, or drink, or have sex (well that’s another post). Nor does she swear like a navvie or dance uncontrollably through mind-enhancing drugs. In her eyes, I’m placed on this mortal coil to cook her food, wash her clothes, pick her up from here, there and everywhere, dish out the cash, clear up the mess and dry the tears. Beyond those tasks, I don’t exist. Mention old boyfriends and ‘that’s disgusting’. Recount old antics I engaged in and that’s just ‘WRONG’. It seems I was born and married on the same day she was.

It’s a shame in some ways. Carrie is quite good fun. Done some pretty crazy things over the years. Some funny, some worthy of a few columns in the Sun. So I guess she won’t want to know about the time I got arrested in Spain for indecent behaviour, or the time I was physically removed from some fancy pants launch party by a burly bouncer for abusing the Radio 1 DJ. She’ll miss the story of me being sick in the collection plate at Midnight Mass because I’d had too many sweet martinis and thrown out of the girl guides for ‘being the exact opposite of everything they stand for’. And best she doesn’t know about the time I was found in the PE teacher’s wardrobe during a school ski trip.

Plus there was the incident on the West Ham team bus, the girls 5-a-side football match fight and that time I accidentally knocked that nice policeman’s helmet off. I really did think he’d find it funny. And they’re the ones I can remember.

On reflection? Maybe it’s best she doesn’t know all this. I would hate for her to think that this is normal behaviour or an imperative rite of passage. Best she only knows how good my chicken casserole is and how generous I am with pocket money rather than see me as a sort of rubbish 80’s Jordan-esque role model.

I can only hope she doesn’t read Frank McAvennie’s biography!

Happy New Year, faithful followers! Let’s hope everything I hoped would happen in 2010 will now happen in 2011. Although the likelihood of Johnny Depp getting the urge to move to a semi-detached in East London is fairly remote. However, I remain optimistic that I will stick my new year’s resolution. Which was not to make one! You see I can’t stick to them. No, not even abstaining from alcohol for 1 month. Plus life is too short. And knowing my luck, I’ll be hit by a truck – my departing thoughts being that if only I had a hangover, it would be so much less painful!

So far, nothing has pushed me to the edge this year. Work is calm. The trains are crap. The weather is awful. Same old. So I thought I’d reflect on some of the random irritations of last year. Things that don’t warrant a full-scale rant but nevertheless are worthy of mention. Apologies if you fall into any of the categories. Remember it’s all done in the best possible taste.

Men in Gladiator sandles
OK I know they were originally worn by men. In Roman times!! It wasn’t a great look but they seemed to work fairly well so long as you’re wearing armour and carrying a sword. Otherwise you just look gay. In fact they’re horrible things even on girls – particularly if you’ve got short legs. It lust looks like you’ve got your ankles caught up in some discarded bits of leather! Leave them to Julius!

Self Service Checkouts
It really shouldn’t be that difficult. So why have relationships between us and these machines has become so fraught? The moments of ‘barcode blindness’ where you almost end up with repetitive strain injury trying to get the frigging thing to scan. And when you finally do, you’re greeted with he phrase “unexpected item in the bagging area”: a phrase so synonymous with the 21st Century shopping experience it’s become a T-shirt slogan. What’s so unexpected anyway? You only swiped the item a second ago and were charged for it. So you have to wait for a member of staff to come and press a few buttons while you stand there feeling utterly incompetent. Still it does at least allow me to buy all those embarrassing things that the spotty checkout assistant probably snigger at.

Public Snogging
Nobody wants to hear your slurping noises. Is it that urgent that you can’t wait til you get home? Or at least find an doorway or a large tree to hide behind? There is a solution though. Get married! Then this revolting desire to eat each other’s faces off will be instantly cured!

Text Speak
Alright it’s OK if it’s a life and death situation. Maybe you’ve just taken a wrong turn up Kilimanjaro (apparently the road signs are rubbish) or you’ve slipped down a ravine in the Amazon rainforest and are clinging to a clifftop while starving crocodiles are snapping at your feet. Clearly you need to get an urgent message to someone and understandly punctuation and grammar aren’t top of your list. So apart from that, or you’re 14, please don’t! Trust me there’s nothing worse that getting a text from a 40 something which reads ‘OMG it ws Gr8 2 c u’. It’s just lazy. More importantly, it takes me twice as long for me to figure it out. But that’s another issue entirely.

Women Who Do their Make Up On The Train
Can you really not spare 5 minutes to slap on the polyfilla before you leave the house? Be honest, it’s not easy is it? Trying to coat your bottom lashes whilst hurtling through tunnels at 60 miles an hour. In fact, just this morning I got off the train covered in a thin layer of Clinique powder while the lass who’d been trying to apply it looked more like Coco the Clown.

That’s enough from me now.
GTG.
L8trs!
TTFN!
LOL.

I’ve got a cold. A ‘Woman Cold’. It’s like ‘Man Flu’. But it means I still get to cook and clean. I get it every year. For Christmas. Still it makes a change from scented shower gel.

Can someone pass that trumpet? I’m going to blow it for a while. Hell why not? It’s the festive season and we all like to blow something once a year. I just want to say, despite this temperature, this hacking cough, this permanent running nose, I successfully managed to entertain 30 guests on Christmas Eve and cook dinner for 7 on Christmas Day. Ok, I had a little help here and there but being a kitchen control freak, it’s often better for any willing helpers to steer clear. It’s a dangerous combination – me, ‘woman cold’ and a boiling hot bucket of mulled wine!

And you know what? It was a roaring success. Even though I say so myself. Just a trumpet? Hey, pass me the tuba!! No one died of food poisoning. Nothing ran out. Nobody argued. Ok, one of the ageds knocked a bottle of red wine on the white table cloth, but that’s an annual event not to be missed. And it means I get to put the washing machine on on Christmas Day!

So it’s now the 30th. And I confess my sum total of doing anything since then has been a disappointing zero. All my plans to clean out that cupboard and empty those boxes have been scuppered by a few good films on tv, a tin of Quality Street and feeling like the walking dead. Still I feel I’m entitled to it. I did all the Christmas shopping, made pickles and chutneys and a Christmas pudding. Just call me Nigella!

OK, you can have the tuba back. Blowing it is hurting my weakened chest. I’m heading back to the sofa. You all know where the left-overs are if you’re hungry. I shall be sat here for the foreseeable, desperately trying to remember when I last had a shower. Maybe if I’d got some scented shower gel for Christmas, it might have reminded me.

Happy New Year, friends.

It’s a horrible noise, isn’t it. You know, the noise of your iPhone hitting the bottom of the toilet. And it’s an ugly picture too. isn’t it. That one of you watching it tumble out of your pocket and straight down the pan knowing there’s absolutely nothing you can do but watch it sink. And being an iPhone, knowing damn well that’s the end of it’s life.

You’d have thought it was the end of mine too. I was panic stricken. Short of breath. Feeling dizzy. I grabbed it as quick as I could but no amount of falling to my knees shouting ‘don’t die, don’t die!’ was going to save it. I watched it flicker as the life (and the wee) drained out of it. Gone. Dead. And it was all my fault. I had no-one else to blame. And that hurt too!

What hurt even more was the realisation of how much I relied on the damn thing. Checking emails, what’s on TV, what’s on at the flicks, the weather, the traffic, Facebook at any time I cared to, Twitter, Ping, Bing – you name it, it was there at my finger tips. And the games! Oh the games! Those precious minutes of down time where I could play mindlessly on Doodlejump, or Coin Dozer. Ye gods! Coin Dozer! I had over 5000 coins!! Took me months!

I don’t know when my period’s due, what the football scores are, whether the Central Line’s down (probably is), whether I’ve won the lottery (probably not) and I can’t jump on Wikipedia to resolve an argument that’s about to kick off.

But the worse thing of all is being without googlemaps! As was demonstrated very clearly last weekend when I found myself in the middle of nowhere armed only with an Atlas (a dusty, usually out-of-date road map of the UK for those of you unfamiliar with the term. It didn’t even have the M25 on it. Most of it still showed farmland and areas recently conquered by Vikings. So goodness knows how I was expected to find a small Essex village. I couldn’t even work out where I’d been, let alone where I was going. It was more luck than judgement. Still at least I had an Alcatel mobile phone c.1982 to make a phone call (phone call – oh how retro!) for the hosts to talk me down.

However, this 3 week exercise in being minus smartphone has had it’s advantages. I actually got a few things done. I read a book. Did a crossword. I wrote lists – and subsequently regained the power of handwriting. And more importantly, I actually had a few conversations with people I’d normally Skype, Ping or Facebook.

So maybe it wasn’t the worse thing in the world after all. Although the temporary loss of numbers was a bit of an arse. And the £50 excess. But it has made me think about relying so ridculously heavily on a piece of technology.

Everything in moderation, huh! Must dash though. I’ve got some Angry Birds that need dealing with!

I remember the day I turned into my mother. The day when I walked in crazy and walked out sensible. The day when I sacrificed fashion for comfort and spontaneity for reality.

It was around 5 years ago. On a Thursday morning. I was all dolled up for Ladies Day at Ascot. Fuschia pink Whistles dress, matching Philip Treacey creation plastered to perfectly coiffeured bob and ah! Now here’s the sensible bit. The shoes. Of course, the obvious choice is the fuschia pink diamante strappy sandals. But the thought of tottering around the London Underground and various other methods of transport in 8 inch heels was quite horrifying. Aside from the fact I can’t walk in the damn things as all that connects your foot to the inner sole is 2 thin pieces of suede, the additional thought of being stood all day in said shoes was even more horrifying. The balls of my feet would be burning before lunch! And then I’d have to take them off and stagger around barefoot like one of those drunken slappers after a night on the half price Bacardi Breezers outside some god-awful Plymouth nightclub called Ritzys.

I could wear the Birkenstocks and take the sandals. But that would mean extra baggage. They won’t fit into the matching fuschia Lulu Guinness clutch. And the only other bag to hand is a Tesco’s Bag For Life. Hardly appropriate. Even if it matched. Plus I’d look like something recently released into the community. However, somewhere in the bottom of the wardrobe, I know there are a pair of low heeled pink sandals that might just solve the problem. Fortunately they match. And sadly I choose to wear them over the gorgeous mules.

I’ve vivid memories of venturing to Mr Stringfellow’s nightly emporium many years ago (before it was a strip club!) wearing very little but some carefully arranged bits of string and the highest heels despite the fact it was usually the middle of winter. No jacket required! And now, well I have to consider the venue – will I be on my feet for any length of time, will I have to spend time outside whilst in transit and therefore what would be appropriate weather attire. And more importantly, how will I get home? Last train? Taxi? Can I afford a taxi? Years ago, getting home was just a mere possibility. In an ideal world, I’d be rather hoping I didn’t. All that mattered was I was going out and I was going to have fun. Hell, I could always get a night bus. Or hitch-hike.

So in end, I opted for the comfy sandals and put the hardly-worn strappy mules back in their box and headed off to Ascot. Mindful not to forget a cardigan, a train timetable, some cash for a taxi, glasses, phone, a packet of Rennie, a small bottle of water (in case of dehydration should the train breakdown) and an umbrella. Just in case.

About time Tesco started making colour co-ordinated Bags for Life!

I’ve never really embraced the joys of cycling. It’s something else I’ve dabbled with over the years – like learning the guitar, aromatherapy and toy boys. But it’s never quite worked for me. I think there’s two reasons for this. One is that I’ve never been able to come to terms with the pain of perching on a hard bit of plastic and the aftermath that goes with it, and the other is that I actually want to live. But after another woeful journey on the Central Line, is it something I really should consider?

Take this morning, for instance. I got on the platform only to join the 20,000 other people who are stood staring open-mouthed at the digital display unit in despair. Of course it’s yet another torturous journey. Squashed up against the rucksack of an unwashed student being slightly preferable to the armpit of the punk. And then we stop. No explanation. The Lord Almighty only knows why! The wrong kind of passenger on the line? Signal failure in Aberdeen. I’ve long given up taking notice of the muffled excuses of the driver.

It’s after those arduous journeys that I long to be mistress of my own travel arrangements. Being above the ground in the fresh air, the wind in my cycle helmet and the smell of exhaust fumes can’t possibly be worse than being involuntarily entered into that killer sauna competition. Trouble is, it doesn’t end there. Negotiating the concourse at Liverpool street is just as dangerous as my emergence always co-incides with National Express emptying half of Hertfordshire into the station. Even if I manage to avoid a clash of foreheads, I’m usually tripped up by their well-hidden, pull-along suitcase.

So it with a sigh of relief that I stagger onto the pavement with most of my person intact, bar my big toe, only to be whisked off down Broadgate on some fluorescent clad, speed freak’s handle bars! I mean do red lights not apply to cyclists?? That’s swiftly followed by a swarm of them coming round the corner at breakneck speed. Is ‘swarm’ the correct term for a lot of cyclists, anyway? Should be a Deathtrap of Cyclists. Whatever it is, they’re bloody everywhere, appearing out of nowhere everytime I try to cross the street. You know, maybe deep down I’m just jealous. Despite the impending and likely grizzly death, they always look fit and healthy, lithe and tanned. Out in the fresh air rather than holed up underground with 2 dozen sugar-enhanced 8 year olds on a school trip.

So what am I saying here (if you’re still awake, I’ll enlighten you). I hate commuting. It’s expensive and full of other miserable buggers going to work! But I’m too scared to cycle. So I won’t. And anyway, my dad said I can’t. I’ll continue an unhealthy, unfit, squished, poor commuter. Maybe someone will invent that jetpack in my lifetime. Anything’s possible.