Glasses: A grumble.

I’ve worn glasses pretty much my whole life, donning my first pair of fetching bottle tops with classic hooked arms aged three, followed up with an operation to correct my squint aged six, resulting in the inevitable pirate eye patch. Over the years I’ve gone for a variety of styles and have currently settled on a pair of dark red Karen Millen’s.

For the most part, I’m pretty down with wearing glasses, as after all, I’d be pretty screwed without them. They make you look smarter, which at school isn’t necessarily a good thing, especially when you have your gappy teeth and general geeky aura to also contend with, but when you reach adulthood, this can occasionally come in handy. You can pretend that you are a sultry secretary who oozes sex appeal (although this clearly hasn’t worked for me thus far). And these days your specs can double as a fashion statement – you can tell a lot about someone from the glasses they choose to wear.

However, wearing glasses comes with its own perils and annoyances. So I’ve decided to compile a list of the top five times when needing to wear glasses is simply not the one, because why the devil not:

1)    When you have the fear that you’ve lost your glasses

This has happened to me on multiple occasions, from when they fell off my face on a theme park ride and were caught by someone in the queue, to when I thought I had lost them on a night out, cried down the phone to my Mum whilst still drunk the next morning only to discover they were under my friends bed, literally in my eye-line from the fold-out mattress. However, the most frustrating situation is when you have fallen asleep in your glasses or had some kind of night spasm and knocked them off the bedside table, resulting in a ten minute scrabble on the floor, blindly looking for them with your useless eyesight. Not ideal.

2)    When you break your glasses

There are many situations where you are in danger of breaking your glasses, whether you are partaking in sports or accidentally getting a bit squiffy on a night out. Breaking your glasses can result in a number of different outcomes. You can continue to wear said glasses, taped together Harry Potter style, which let’s face it just isn’t all that cute. You can wear your old scratched up glasses which probably aren’t your correct prescription anymore until yours are fixed, resulting in headaches and general discomfort. You can wear your contacts, which is fine in most situations; however mine just aren’t as good as my glasses and cause me to want to nap part of the way through the day at work, which I’m pretty sure is frowned upon. Or you can buy a brand new sparkly pair, which leads me nicely on to...

3)    When you have to buy new glasses but are poor af

There are no two ways about it, nice glasses do not come cheap. Unless you want to wear thick, ugly glasses that look like they came straight out of the eighties, you are looking at spending at least £100 on a new pair, and that doesn’t include having them thinned. And before you scream ‘YOU SHOULD HAVE GONE TO SPECSAVERS!’, I'm way ahead of you - I've been going there for years (don't event get me started on Haine and Smith). It actually makes me really quite mad when I think about it that I have to pay for glasses full stop – I didn’t ask to be born with astigmatism, after all. It’s just a bit unfair if truth be told. And I’m constantly poor, so there’s also that.

4)    When you see other people wearing glasses with non prescription lenses

Seeing other people wearing glasses without lenses makes me want shake them, give them a bit of a slap and sit them down for a stern word or two. I know glasses are just the coolest and the ultimate in chic accessorising (ahem) but I just don’t understand for the life of me why someone would choose to wear glasses when, if I had the money, I would be splashing out on laser eye surgery in order to NOT have to wear them. It baffles me. If you’re one of those people, please readdress this life decision. I don’t want to have to disown you.

5)    When people feel the need to test your vision

There is nothing more annoying than when someone decides to take your glasses from your face/ wave their hands around and asks you 'how many fingers am I holding up?' like you are actually certified blind. They put on your glasses and have a good old laugh about how they feel drunk and ask if this is how I see without my specs on. No. It's not. Now give my glasses back so I can see you well enough to give you the death stare.

Looking up at that, I realise it’s quite the moan fest and it’s a bit first world problems.com, but sometimes you need a bit of a rant, right? I’m sure if I thought about there would be more to moan about on the topic, but instead I’m just going to leave you with these beautiful images of me, aged 5. You’re welcome.

Fitness and other struggles

There are some people in life who are naturally motivated to get fit. There are those early risers who are perfectly happy to get up at 5.30am and take a brisk jog around the block or enjoy a pre-work spin class. These people are also the kinds of people who will happily exist solely on kale juice, broccoli and turkey slices.

I, however, am not one of those people.

The motivation to get fit and stay that way has always been an ongoing issue in my life. I have a terrible habit of getting really in shape and then completely losing the plot and commencing to do absolutely no exercise and exist on a combination of burgers, biscuits and wine for an extended period of time.

A classic example of this is when, about 5 years ago (Jesus I’m getting old) I went on a girl’s holiday to Zante with my svelte friends. At the beginning of the summer I had ventured to New Look to try on a bikini and had a terrible shock when I saw in the mirror that I had unknowingly morphed into a beached beluga whale. I then went on a bit of a mission and spent the summer on a horrible cereal-based diet and going to the gym six days a week, losing a stone and a half before our holiday. Just how unattainable this regime was became overwhelmingly apparent when, after spending a week drinking and eating McDonalds in Greece, the weight began to creep back on.

And I am not, and have never been, an early riser. It’s not the being up early thing that bothers me all that much; it’s just the process of actually dragging myself out of my warm comfy bed in the first place. This is a pattern of behaviour that started at a young age, whereby I was perfectly happy and capable to walk, as long as someone physically stood me up onto my feet and made me do so.

This is a pattern that I am desperate to change. Not the eating bit so much – I’m pretty sure I’m never going to be happy just eating lettuce leaves and drinking varying degrees of joyless detoxifying green tea. It’s not even that I’d like to be skinny because I know deep down I’m always going to be curvy girl. I just want to be fit and enjoy exercise just as much as those people doing crazy yoga on the beach at sunrise and running marathons. That’s not too much to ask, right?

So I started this process last year. Firstly, I decided to go for a bit of nostalgia and joined a netball team. I hadn’t played since secondary school and I’m not that good, but there’s something really fun about playing a team sport and making some really great friends in the process. Our team, Hoops I did it again (great name), have since decided that because we didn’t win all that often, it would be wise for us to go to some training, or as someone else put it, to voluntarily put ourselves into netball boot camp. It may be freezing cold playing outside in January, but being part of a team motivates me to get off my butt and get moving, which is perfect.

Secondly, I signed myself up for a 10km run. This would have been an amazing idea, had I not then fallen down a step in the pub (sober) and pulled a tendon in my foot. Not ideal. I discovered, though, that simply injuring myself was not enough to warrant giving me a refund on the £40 I paid to enter, so in two weeks I will be dragging myself around the central London course in an attempt to not completely embarrass myself. Here’s hoping. I have given my friends strict instructions not to come to witness this particular failure of a sports venture on my part, but I’m pretty sure they may come anyway. Sneaky blighters.

I’ve also started a Saturday morning yoga class, where I last week discovered I can’t do a shoulder stand. I’m still convinced that I will be able stand on my head by week four, which is what, my friends, you call optimism.

And last but not least, I have the office. Most of the people I work with are having a bit of a gym moment and one runs marathons. So naturally I am bowing to peer pressure and have so far this year been to the gym 5 times. Mostly it’s so I can watch TV on the fancy treadmills as I don’t have a telly licence, but you know, whatever works.

So, so far in 2016, so good. I’m yet to become a morning person and I haven’t gone the whole hog and started running home from work, but you never know, by the end of the year I could be a whole new woman. After all, stranger things have happened.

Baking break and boozy brownies

I told you there would be cake.

It’s a well known fact among my friends and family that I like to bake. Cupcakes, cookies, brownies, the lot. My friends usually get baked gifts on their birthdays. I even took three days off work to bake for my friend’s wedding last year. I’m one of those people who, in a very pathetic and juvenile fashion, profess to have been a Mary Berry fan-girl before she was cool, aka pre Bake Of fame. Let’s face it, baking is kind of my thing.

However, of late I may have let it slide a little. I could make all the excuses under the sun about people being on diets and staving off cake and not having the time, but these would just be great big porkies.  What has actually happened is I’ve just gotten lazy and have spent more and more of prime Sunday baking time in bed watching Grey’s on Netflix and intermittently napping.

Now, it’s safe to say that my crappy excuses haven’t fooled my housemates Chloe and Laura. In my interview for my room in my Tooting flat (before which I’d had three glasses of wine, so I was a little tipsy – but that’s a story for another day), I announced that I like to make cakes. It may have even been the main reason they chose me to be their flatmate. So when I moved in and the fabled baked goods didn’t materialise they, quite rightly, began to not-so-subtly hint that I should get my ass into the kitchen and get to it.

On my birthday, knowing by this point that I’m also a fan of one or two alcoholic beverages of a night out, C and L bought me a rather excellent birthday present. Wrapped up separately in a bag, clad in leopard-print wrapping paper (love a bit of Pat Butcher chic), were two limes and bottle of coke (in phallic formation, see below), a bottle of white rum, a bar of chocolate and a copy of ‘The Boozy Baker’ by Lucy Baker. On page 110 was a post-it, marking a recipe of Cuba libre brownies, containing, you’ve guessed it, Coca-Cola, white rum and lime. So who am I to say no, right? The trick worked.

So this weekend (not gonna lie, 5 weeks after said birthday), I rustled up some of these tasty treats. Now I know it’s January and people are trying to be healthy, but sometimes we all need a brownie with rum and about 4 million calories, right? Right?!

These brownies, as it turns out, are ridiculously good. Squidgy and boozy and chocolaty and all that great stuff (not to blow my own horn or anything). So all this pre-ramble has come to this: the recipe. For the full version, make sure to check it out here – it would be a disservice, as well as blatant copyright to claim it as my own. So when you find yourself in your pjs at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon eating cheerios for dinner, give them a go. Believe me, your housemates, family and friends will appreciate it, which makes the effort worth it!

FOR THE BROWNIES (sorry – it’s in American measurements)

1 ½ cups sugar

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

10oz dark chocolate

½ pound unsalted butter

1 cup granulated sugar

3 large eggs

¾ cup Coca Cola

¼ cup white rum

FOR THE FROSTING

1/ lb unsalted butter (room temp)

3 tbsp cocoa powder

1/3 cup white rum

4 cups icing sugar

Zest of two limes

25: A monologue.

There comes a time, when you’re hurtling into your 25th year and heading on the road to an all-too-probable quarter-life crisis, when the best thing to is just to stop for a second. It doesn’t need to be for long – and god knows that it won’t be, thanks to an ongoing crippling case of FOMO – but sometimes it’s good to just take a moment to reflect. I’ve heard it’s good for the soul, kind of like looking at pictures of cute dogs in costumes or drunken karaoke.

So I’ve decided, since this is my new blog and I’m stepping boldly into my mid-twenties, that I would share my moment of reflection with you all. Aren’t you the lucky ones? (As an aside, it won’t always be like this – this blog will contain many more fun things, including cake. And who doesn’t love cake?!).

So 24 was an interesting age to be. It involved all of the things, including but not exclusive to; moving house, falling in love, surprise heartbreak, weight loss, weight gain, joining a netball team, finding new friends, losing friends, wedding baking, dating apps, over-sharing, crying, laughter and far too many glasses of rose wine and gin. I have both realised that I am pretty damn good at my job and also that I am terrified of going on holiday unless it all goes tits up and they realise that maybe I’m a big old fraud after all.

And do you know what? All of these things are okay. I may be in the half of the Facebook wall that is too drunk to find my phone. I may be the one who has happy, coupled-up friends tell her that they ‘live vicariously’ through me because my life can be somewhat of a veritable smorgasbord of mishaps and unfortunate events, which apparently is really very entertaining. I may even want a dog so badly, I am subscribed to a newsletter whereby they send me a picture of a cute dog every day just to make me feel a little less depressed that there is no way in hell I can currently conceive having one.

And you know why all these things are actually fine? It’s because after all of this, I am still alive and full of hope for the coming year. I’m convinced that my 25th year will be the one in which I will appear in rush hour crush, have my JK Rowling-style epiphany on a train and kick arse at my new job. I’m going to go on holiday for a week and get a tan and I will finish another Game of Thrones book. I’m going to tone up so that I wobble less.

And I will do all of this whilst hopefully suppressing the urge to eat all of the chocolate and drink too much and all of the other signs of a quarter-quell induced crisis. Take that, life.

25 – I’m so excited I may just do a little wee.