No, I haven’t developed a stutter. I’m just sitting here, phone in hand, contemplating that innocuous-looking little lower-case white ‘f’ with the blue background: the Facebook app. photo credit It’s just a button, a single tap on my iPhone home screen, but what lurks beneath […]
“Never drink on an empty stomach…..always have a couple of beers first….” So came the sage advice delivered dead-pan by my dad to my impressionable pre-pubescent self, as I sat listening intently to his pearls of wisdom. My sister and I were drinking warm Coca-Cola […]
photo credit Having been a big blonde fish in the small pond that was Foster’s Primary, it was quite a shock when I rocked up for my first day at the imposing Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School, aka Chis ‘n’ Sid, or “Chis ‘n’ Sad” as […]
“Sheesh, you’re looking old today, girlfriend!” “You’ve really shoehorned yourself into those skinny jeans, eh fatty?” “I wouldn’t bother applying for that job mate, you’d never get it.” With friends like that, who needs enemies, huh? Only these are not the words of a two-faced […]
photo credit The Peaky Blinders may have terrorised Birmingham and beyond in the 1920s, but these days there’s a current gangster threat much closer to home: The Cheeky Breeders. photo credit This gaggle of bottle-toting bandits operates far and wide, a network comprised of minacious […]
My earliest memory of life is being held aloft aged three by my father to peer through a round cabin-hole hospital window at my mewling newborn sister, delicate as a baby starling, freshly laid that morning by my mum. Having been the sole previous tenant […]
I’m no religious nut, but indulge me in a moment’s imaginative thinking here, if you will. When God/Allah/Will o’ the Wisp/<insert name of your chosen deity here> was sitting on a cloud, idly coming up with his “commandments” during a quiet moment when he wasn’t […]
There are two halves to most women’s lives, clearly divided: BC (Before Children) and AD (After Delivery). As was the case with Jesus (should you be religiously inclined), welcoming a child into your life causes time to start all over again. Such is the significance. […]
Those first lazy, hazy days of summer tend to bring the average Brit out in a hot sweat, and not just because the mercury is rising.This sweat is almost as likely to be due to the fashion dilemmas presented to us by the sudden, shocking […]
As human beings living in the 21st century, we have evolved, adapted and invented so much that we are practically unrecognisable from the knuckle-dragging Neanderthals of times gone by. Yet despite the neatly-pressed shirts and carefully-sculpted coiffures of modern man, there are still the odd […]
Until the first episode of Ibiza Uncovered aired on Sky1, the fact that we were about to appear on a weekly television show hadn’t fully sunk in. Sure, we’d signed on the dotted line of the contracts, filmed the “before” scenes: packing our cases at […]
Like a cartoon bomb, the lit fuse on our two-week San An 1997 package holiday was getting dangerously close to it’s explosive finale, so it was with great relief that Kez and I finally secured the jobs that would diffuse the tense situation, thus allowing […]
With my brain still pickled from celebrating (commiserating?) a recent landmark birthday, and having dashed straight from a two-day business conference, it’s fair to say that I arrive for my appointment at The Floatworks feeling somewhat frazzled. I’ve been burning my 40-year-old candle at both […]
Following that first girly jaunt to The White Isle, the crew agreed that the trip had been the absolute dog’s balearics and were chomping at the bit to get back over to the party girl’s paradise as soon as our sixth-form schedules would allow. […]
I fell in love with clubbing long before I was old enough to set foot in one. Well, legally anyway. At fifteen, I papered my bedroom walls, door and even the ceiling with flyers for raves and club nights, signing up to the Flying Squad […]
I was just having a Spring clean on this beautiful sunny morning and came across these poems I wrote for two of my oldest mates, Nicolette and Sheryl (the latter nicknamed Pinhead/Ronnie Corbett due to her diminutive frame), on their respective hen nights. Nicolette’s hen […]
A year ago, when the calendar flipped round to March for the thirty-ninth time in my life, I started thinking of myself as forty to give myself a year to get used to the idea. Whenever people asked how old I was I’d say I […]
photo credit It’s Sunday evening after the previous night’s clubbing, you’re slumped in the local old folks’ home wearing a pair of stained, too-big jeans, which you’re sure until recently were the perfect fit. Suddenly, over the course of what feels like only a matter […]
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved a party. From the 6th birthday bash at McDonald’s during which hordes of hyper kiddies were invited behind the scenes to see where the wafer-thin patties were flipped and were permitted to peer into the freezers, […]
photo credit Working on the beauty circuit in the late Nineties was a bit like a Scalextric race track, in terms of both pace and circular routine: find a juicy role with a luxury brand, immerse yourself into it, onto the next….work by day, party […]
