"Eminem? More like M&S!"

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

Diversity isn’t a dirty word, unlimited delivery is.

Love clothes, but hate going shopping? A lack of time is no excuse as the enormously easy way you can buy clothes online means that in just a few clicks, fast fashion can arrive on the same day sometimes. It seems like a no-brainer, especially when most online retailers offer free returns when your items don’t fit, but that’s just it; buying clothes online means it’s difficult to tell.

Frustratingly, we’re still confronted with images of size 6–8 models when shopping online. Women of willowy proportions are still the industry norm. If you’re a shorty, you’re in luck as most online stores have petite ranges which are improving, but in most cases, petite clothes are shown on a size 6 model. All of this makes it a minefield to maintain your self-esteem. Online stores show catwalk videos and galleries of images, but who knows if clothes’ll suit until you’ve tried them on, especially when it’s only possible to see clothes on a body shape, potentially so different to your own. So what do we do? Order more sizes, order things anyway, why not; we can always send them back, and send back we do. One friend said:

“it’s much less depressing crying at home about how shit something looks on than alone in a badly lit stinky dressing room”.

At least we can drink wine at home. Still, it seems, we’re suckers for punishment and the small amount of serotonin that shopping induces, means it’s all too tempting to treat ourselves. Ads are everywhere, everyone worth following on Instagram has a buying link in their bio and with a few taps, a delivery driver is slapping a bag in your hand. So you go online for a look that’ll stop traffic. Well with that new outfit you’ve ordered you might: air traffic that is.

Our insatiable appetite for fashion arriving at work or at home is fostered by irresponsible attitudes from online clothes retailers at a time when there are more delivery vehicles on the road now than ever. Just over three years ago CEO and founder of ASOS, Nick Robertson hinted that sizing software was on the way due to their returns rate reaching 30%, hurting company profits. If returns reduced by 1%, he estimated, profits would increase by a staggering £10,000,000!

It seems that the no-quibble-returns option that most online shops like ASOS offer are open to abuse and needs a rethink. How many people out there are potentially posing and posting back? Even if you honestly just need a frock and find yourself making the most of that unlimited {sometimes} free delivery, why should you have any qualms about sending ensembles back. When clothes online don’t fit. Unless *sigh* you’re an able bodied up and down industry size [8 preferably] and everything just looks great on you, *Longer Sigh* for most people it’s a case of spending and sending back. Still, send it back we can. We’re well within our rights to, however, this kind of shopping is what’s contributing to climate change.

London is experiencing an all time critical high level of air pollution, all whilst online stores satiate our pleasures for parcels, they’re adding to this problem. Sadiq Khan says he wants to sack off the sight of diesel vans in London like the ones that most stores use, as toxic diesel particulate matter levels in the capital are at an illegal all time high. However, this problem of parcels going back and forth only forms part of a two-part problem.

If browsing out of boredom; you’ll see that some online shops have improved the ranges of sizes on offer with petites and plus sizes but we’re still faced with unattainable body shapes modelling the clothes we want. Where are the models of ‘normal’ proportions? If we’re a long way from that being the norm, what about visibility for disabled models, amputees? The ubiquitous 90’s heroin chic physique still dominates pages. Sometimes it’s lovely to look at clothing on this body shape, on the kind of body that designers have in mind, but its alienating. It means that for the likes of the average woman, clothes become an abstract concept; art and unwearable art at that. What if you’re anywhere like an average 10 bust, 12 waist and a 14 hips or a common, 14 bust and an 18 around the hips? Even if you’re the U.K.’s ideal 12; that dress sashaying down the runway in an 8, just isn’t going to look like it does on the model, on us. Hence we return.

However, catwalks could be the solution to fighting pollution.

We need to see companies like ASOS implementing greener practices, taking the issue of our environment seriously, encouraging shoppers to do the same and at the same time support our self-esteem. We need to see diversity and different size normalised. As women we cannot help but cruelly compare ourselves to others, however, in this instance, it might actually help our self-esteem seeing someone of a similar size model clothes; it would certainly give me buying confidence and less likely to return. So, I ask of you, online fashion retailers; the likes of ASOS, show off all sizes on catwalks. Seeing what size 12 thighs are going to look like in those jeans will help us buy. Seeing what our size 16 armpits will look like (those bits that looks like a bum) in that dress may encourage me to hit ‘check out’ and less likely to order 6 sizes and send 5 back.

Trailblazing the normalisation of body diversity might just stop someone like me or one of my precious friends feeling shit about themselves and crying into changing room curtains again. It’d reduce wasted deliveries, tackle climate change and help fashion retailers make money.

Retailers: Start by showing videos of models of diverse sizes, in fact modelling all sizes available on a catwalk. Fashion doesn’t need to be made out of hemp to help, but being eco-conscious will help us all.

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

How my heart has to travel

Packed in to full capacity, arms legs tangle like wires. Bars are clung to where men hang like meat. Women fly for seats but stand in pinching heels as too-large people pour themselves like thick custard into window tables. 

I stand my ground, a size 3 and a half piece of area, no bigger than the lid for the tin of a cake. I position myself nearest the door for an early escape. At the next station, a school line of children wait to board, sweetly lined up with beaming soft and crummy faces, hair brushed by their mothers only to disobediently spring back wayward. 

As their teacher prepares them to board, the puzzle of jaded sweaty people hemmed in by the doors, do not budge. The wall ignores. Laptops stay tapping of late night conferences, retirement plans and interviews, diets, targets and loud iPods blare out of unclean ears, whilst eyes cast over UCAS application forms, tesco favorite delivery slots, secret  Pinterest boards and people with dirty news on their hands; don't motion to move. 

“UuuuuuOOOOoooooouuuoooooww” Cried the skinny, short, fat and fuzzy kids. The line of sweet children who cannot board are sullen with disappointment, “It’s ok children, we’ll make the theatre show” she ebulliently reassures. She the teacher, neatly keeping them from revolting, snot dripping, laces tripping, nose picking. 

I’m sure that a dozen of us full sized people would have done anything to trade places with those children, but the constraints on adulthood kept us silently on board.

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

take your hair out

Her hair blew back in a gust of wind. Her hair flew out like it was escaping her, but standing on end, diagonal shards of blonde defiantly rooted to her scalp like tall spears at ease in the hands of warriors. 

This girl was a warrior, but more like, an arguer. A really good kick you in the nuts, throw sand in your eye dirty fighter. Even her hair was ready to riot; golden in the ice bright sunny wind, it was trying to be free of her, it wanted no more of the days argument. 

The volume of her hair spoke loudly, displeased at being laid flat, neatly bound at the nape of her neck grasped by an invisible fist. 

Free! Free fly-away hair. When there’s no occasion for uniform, go. Free yourself so that you gently fly away to land with lint on pavement and never get collected but blown away to find other dust. 

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

Transport me away

In the morning, when the carriage is packed. I’ll glower. Think of the marriage of soap and a puff Please. Think of others around and give time enough for a shower.

Good health permitting and if sitting close, please. Breathe through your nose.

I don’t want to taste, the smell of your breath. The back of your teeth remind me of death.

Not all from our bodies make things that smell sour. There are fries and burgers in wet paper bags. The stench of your coat infused with your fags.

Make yourself small, please don’t spread out. Keep yourself quiet and I don’t care what your phone conversation’s about!

Now, I don’t mind school children, I was one of them once. I don’t mind loud music, I've my own EarPods. I’ll get up for anyone who’d like to sit down.

There's one last thing though, that really makes me frown. Keep your feet of the seats you f€cking inconsiderate trolls, you’ll make my coat brown!

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

Happy Valentines to Yourself

Pink Valentines skies betray the weatherman’s advice so I’ve decided to put down my sheltering umbrella and just get down out of cover in the down pour of what is pouring out of all the lovers, all abundant.

The abundance of flowers and cards that drown me are in the arms of lovers who haven’t found me and are tending their love to someone else. But today I succeed, a first to be repeated, no doubt but I know now it can be done. 

With you, me, whoever knew it. Light has switched on.


Cellophane and tissue papers are not what my heart was made for. No ribbons in pretty colours can tie my heart to yours, it just shows you like to tie up loose ends and make something loose look better than it truly is and how it began.

I’d rather show I’m planted with roots, but not get pot bound growing in soil, shoots all tangled round each other like those lovers, fingers legs arms and noses, free but tied like those bouquets, roses; 

I hate the sickening sweet ones constrained and wrapped in confectionary foil.

Why toil in topiary never to see outside of terracotta? You've got to! Dip a toe in showy romance. The bouquet of those bouquets let me know its ok. Sometimes life smells of roses, sometimes of nothing. 

Nothing to report is nothing to sell yourself short on.

Where I’m short, I’ve got tall glasses filled elsewhere. Glasses to see and to be prepared. I’ll look you up and down and through you, at you, study you, gaze on you and when I close my eyes, dream of you, but that’s ok because when I dream, I’ll dream alone. 

The one place I can postpone my love,

but it’s always there, ready to pour, into the next glass half full up. I’ll fill it up. to the top. I need full. To be full. I need at least half full. Not half fat, half time, half term, but come to full terms, full time. 

Always. I am there Valentine, right on time, when it’s time it’ll be right. So will I Valentine.  

[makingtheupsetter]

The Making of ‘The Upsetter’ a music video for Metronomy. These elaborate costumes were built using a combination of foam, cardboard, natural materials, and rubber.

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

This is beautiful 💚

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

Glad Tidings

That plucked Goose will drip with fat, that paper crown will rip and disintegrate. 

Those crackers will snap and smoke will peep in to the air and up my nose that drips. 

Sprouts will roll and so will eyes at the Queen. 

Smiles will widen and eyes will glisten like wet rain on a concrete pavement. 

Hills will tumble and trees and beasts will sleep.

Children and cocktails will stir on evenings long and lit

and priorities will be appropriated to the correct regiments. 

Wrap little boxes, stacked, piled and scattered, boxes made of stone

The sweet stale air of someone home alone will be heavy.

My heart will feel heavy for those feeling the itching for drink but cannot get it, for warmth and do not get, it for food and never fill past empty and

for a seat that doesn’t get sat in

We pray

We are preyed on by our needs to impress, to buy a new 

outfit to change the house to clean and 

make no mistake that we are putting on our best. There’s always someone who wants to be somewhere else. 

We repeat. 

Each year we repeat 

it always seems to come sooner. 

In the distance a great tide rolls. Great tides gathering teams of bitter cold salty water join forces with sea spray on the the crests of waves, fish swim away. These unrelenting crashing waves I know are coming, they're huffing and puffing and gathering more power far out at sea. Then with a mighty bitter gale, the tide roars in but spreads across the shores. Gently lapping, magnificently crashing against a lighthouse that will see someone home. 

That little boat my love will carry presents and gifts with wet rope and slimy nets

Oh for shame do not send those gifts back to the emptying seas.

Wrap up tight, tie the ribbon right for Gods sake if you do have a Turkey don’t let it dry.

It’s just one day, made to allow you to make amends. Time bends over backwards like I would. 

Fires glow and burn soft faces, stockings hang from radiators with wet socks and pants

The new year brings new plans 

But in a moment alone try to reach as high as the northern star with your mind, divert that light to where you find a piece of peace comfort and joy.

Treasure new toys, dressed in swaddling paper, thank for your gifts and what you are made of. 

Boxes will be left empty, good useless paper packaging creased but kept

Or tossed away to rot and disintegrate in the corner of bins, the final resting place for Firs, 

wasting things will be our biggest sin. 

I’m sorry gentle birds. Keep swooping, light fat birds keep coming back

know not of the rubble beneath you, find and peck at the empty sack. 

Take ribbon and fibre, steal glittering strings. Weave new nests to lay in the spring

Now is not just the only time of year to celebrate new things.

-Written at the Couldson Writers Group last week.

Merry Christmas. 

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

Treasured illustrations 

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

Get a good night's sleep

[mealsandboon]

The Snarky Barman. When I want a cocktail, I want an extensive list to choose from and a quirky inviting bar to hang out in and a suitably stand offish, coy but secretly totally into his job barman who gets off on vigorously shaking beakers full of ice and handcrafted mind blowing concoctions...

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

“Throw a stick, and the servile dog wheezes and pants and stumbles to bring it to you. Do the same before a cat, and he will eye you with coolly polite and somewhat bored amusement. And just as inferior people prefer the inferior animal which scampers excitedly because someone else wants something, so do superior people respect the superior animal which lives its own life and knows that the puerile stick-throwings of alien bipeds are none of its business and beneath its notice. The dog barks and begs and tumbles to amuse you when you crack the whip. That pleases a meekness-loving peasant who relishes a stimulus to his self importance. The cat, on the other hand, charms you into playing for its benefit when it wishes to be amused; making you rush about the room with a paper on a string when it feels like exercise, but refusing all your attempts to make it play when it is not in the humour. That is personality and individuality and self-respect -- the calm mastery of a being whose life is its own and not yours -- and the superior person recognises and appreciates this because he too is a free soul whose position is assured, and whose only law is his own heritage and aesthetic sense.”

H.P. Lovecraft

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

@RichMixLondon booking not using 100% of my brain meant I nearly saw Luc Besson's fallible @LucyTheMovie goodjob @lucygraceactor was #better

Excited to hear @lucygraceactor had written a solo show, I tapped away to book a ticket on the @RichMixLondon site. Confused, not using 100% of my brain I almost booked a ticket for the fallible Luc Besson title. I would have been in deep water had I missed this. 

GARDEN, performed and written by Lucy Grace directed by Melanie Spencer for @tamashatheatre Developing artist platform COMMUNITY on Friday 5th September. 

Lonely office worker Lucy, takes pity on a pot plant, it’s called a Dracaena and it’s being abused daily by a dozy receptionist. Rescuing it, she recreates its native Tanzanian habitat in her home. Only problem is, Lucy lives on the 22nd floor of a high rise flat. 

In this gorgeous gentle heartwarming scratch of a show (which seemed to showcase that this artist had plenty more to show and tell having premiered tonight as a one woman act) Lucy allowed my imagination to soar with her in a metaphorical air ballon of comedy stretching over a visceral tundra of ideas. 

In an equally engaging post show talk, Lucy shared how she stumbled on facts about the commonplace but exotic plant and found how it could heal a feud in a distant community; the title of the evening’s Tamasha showcase at the prestigious fertile ground Rich Mix. 

“I found facts on the social significance of Dracaenas and thought this is Theatrical Gold… that and the idea of rain forests. Most of us know about rain forests and that they’re there and special and need protecting, yet I'll probably never go to a rainforest. We have to make do with parks in cities and they’re great, but I can’t allow myself to believe that that’s enough".

GARDEN is about a woman who gradually disengages from the inner city world she lives in, one awkward social scenario at a time. Disparaging the daily commute,”being so close to 80 brains in a tube everyday, yuk”, Lucy finds one day she feels more at one with the feel of soil on her face rather than having the world at her feet.

Lucy Grace is one to watch out for when she returns from a Broadway run of Tall Stories, The Snail & The Whale @TallStoriesNews. No doubt @SohoTheatre or the likes will snap her up for a full hour, as Tamasha certainly do cultivate great performance makers on their developing artists platform. 

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

A beautifully retrospective beauty review: Desperate to smell different.

It’s true, you can smell desperation. Our noses are like heat seeking missiles when it comes to sniffing it out and then there are the clever perfumers who can bottle it. The latest trick is encapsulating the essence of Eau Désespoire and branding it with Celebrity X to get it splashed liberally like Eau de Cologne around our ears as fast as we can paw over said celebs splashed across glossy magazines. In the current climate of everyone who’s anyone extending their “brand” with a fragrance, the market is saturated by the stench of celebs selling out. 

The smell of desperation however can be beautifully arresting, poignantly pungent even, as Revlon’s Charlie Red makes a return. You heard it here right! That red hot packaging getting dustier over the decades has had a revival, Charlie Red is now old enough to drink to her coming of age in the USA. 

I rediscovered the audacious smelling Charlie Red at beautymart smack bang in the middle of boxparkshoreditch. Inspired to purchase it with BeautyMart’s location kudos alone within trend central, I depressed the atomiser and sprayed it. Smelling it, I was 30 going on 13 again. I ultimately trust the Shoreditch playground for fragrance provisions, especially as this is where Parisienne, Ltat Libre d’Orange has made it’s home here, stocking my favourite Jasmine et Cigarette as recently mentioned in the Stylish list.

Charlie Red is intoxicatingly whiffy, sweet and potent, just as I recall. This scent reminded me of the army of precocious deeply monosyllabic teenage girls and sometimes the lippiest of lasses, who sophisticatedly insolent with attitude bleeding from their ears, all caked on this fragrance.  

Until I’d discovered Charlie Red, my scent references were Roddick’s Fuzzy Peach  and Pantene. On the return to school one fresh January morning, the cold slitting my nasal cavities, it was my then BFF (in hindsight a shady girl) who I first noticed wearing a storm cloud of it. She’d received Charlie Red from her Nan for Christmas, after the scent hit me from 50 paces I was also attacked with a waft of it entering the school yard. It was like walking into a wall of adolescent armour worn by almost every girl around. 

Flourishing in our antagonistic adolescences, smelling of an impending headache caused by synthetic candied flowers shoved in your face, Charlie Red will always be redolent of my youth, a time learning how to assert myself, to question everything and to be unafraid of standing out.

This powerful, attitude of a youthful scent was born after the boom of super Pooferies Dior Poison and Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium, worn by women and my mum in the 80’s and then well into the 90’s as Dads repeatedly bought it every Christmas (as guided by Boots TV adverts thus packing men and their lack of imaginations off to the shops).

Power Pooferies were an olfactory suggestion of stilettos; a smell to be worn with shoulder pads, a sit up and listen to me scent that softened to a sweet inviting musk. Charlie Red, was the defiant daughter in discovery of self and femininity. Wearing it made everyone’s eyes water including mine. 

After Charlie, advertising for a new era of fresher scents depicted models frolicking in the Hamptons in candy coloured Polo shirts. I’m sure this tapped into our British scentsibilities. I could relate to that. Everyone wore Ralph Polo shirts from Sutton Coldfield to Croydon. (Albeit most were fake, as crass Horsey crests usually looked like a drunken huntsman wielding a truncheon on a wobbly llama, rather than the prestigious Polo rider upon a steed.)

Migraine inducing Charlie Red gave both sweet girls and Mean Girls guts, more than the then bumbling presidents of adolescence on Dawson’s Creek could ever have. Whilst Katie Holmes was sneaking out of her bedroom window to sail across a lake to have a dalliance with Dawson or continue to procrastinate platonically with Pacey, I imagined what scent Katie might wear? (I would have been bombarded with commercial breaks.) I cite the influence of Katie Holmes and co as inspiration for breezier more aspirational scents like the outdoorsy Ralph Lauren Polo Sport, or Tommy if urged to ramp up the rebelliousness. 

The fragrance industry now so much more sophisticated, helps us feel cleaner, richer, more powerful, almost like the million dollars it itself is worth. Almost. The true value of the industry in the UK is actually almost a BILLION pounds, however it is thanks to those clever noses who know how to sniff out what we still are: Desperate to impress.  

During my formulate years I chose to smell like the powdery citric acid rain of Impulse 02 (perfect post P.E) and could imagine the beach life in Ibiza whilst listening to Pete Tong in my dim room, mood brightened with sun creamy, cucumber and dry driftwoods in (‘Dab it Off’) Davidoff’s Cool Water. I’ve still yet to visit Ibiza, but now with a whiff of a scent I can be swept off to locations far far away from the reality of my my obtuse teenage self and I can even occupy my time smelling like some of my dream occupations; a librarian surrounded by comfortingly musty books or a gardener having plucked fresh ripe tomatoes. I can even take comfort in the smell of a cosy clean laundrette. One can even smell like a newborn baby. Weird, but you can. We can scentsationally regress, I digress. 

Before Charlie Red, Charlie was apparently a rival to now beauty behemoth, Lauder’s Estée. Estée too was once a desperately defiant young business woman. Unable to get a pitch in a New York department store, Ms Lauder took to the stairs of the top floor and ‘accidentally’ dropped a bottle of the elixir Youth Dew, over the balustrade. The bottle dramatically smashed and the heady fragrance pervaded the ground floor below, leaving everyone smelling of the quixotic riot and wanting to know more about the perfumed protest. In this case the store buyers certainly got a whiff of Ms. Lauder’s desperation and rushed to stock it. 

With thanks to role-models like the magnificent Estée Lauder, no longer can anyone turn their noses up to entrepreneurial women like her in the perfume business. I think that the humble but head-turning Charlie Red followed the female tuxedo suit giving girls like me an idea of our potential, our aspirations enveloped in fragrance. Opening a box of sparkling scent gives us a glimpse into a more glamorous world. Seeing Cindy Crawford on the box, well of course I thought I could be as successful as the Revlon face herself: I bet she caked herself with Charlie. 

Thanks for reading. I’m off to go perfume myself.

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

Write with a whisper, with sighs, with the words that are stuck in your throat.

Anais Nin

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

Blackberries, thrust up through briars with their bursting glossy black pearls of sweet juice, brazenly dangling from thickets just out of reach. Razor strong arms of jousting clusters from the centres of hedge rows, triumphantly burst through thorn-ed branches enticing drunken wasps and birds swooping in between prickly sconces. 

The mighty scrambling masses reach out to hook tender thin fingered skin to shield the delicate unformed corsages below, innocent petals soon to ripen forming firm green loins of tightly clustered green baubles, who’s cheeks turn to russet and in the sun become swelled onyx orbs, jewelled knots of golden hot light in dark amethyst bundles. 

Blackberries, whorishly, brazenly offering themselves, rain rinsed and bulging taut full of tart sap with destiny to burst on a tongue ‘tween teeth and the roof of a mouth or in the clutches of a sharp tight beak; delicately swiftly stolen from a tether, plucked gently from willing sockets, purveyors clasping lightly onto necks of firm fruit . 

Light risking stealing dexterous digits are no match for the blackberry’s charged burdened skin, brimming readily, exploding on pressure of fingers and thumb, deep ink juice staining the cracks in fingertips had not you noticed were there. Privileged are the blackberries impatiently eaten before fortunes of jam or eager a crumble or tart are touted.  

For Shame, don’t let the liquid leak, shrivel down into the mature stem, dry or let the once barbed spears proudly displaying triumphantly prized collections of un-uniformed knots propelled into the summer sky fade into the fall. These berries will not. The berries briar ward will cling on to them until only spider webs and frosts shall come. 

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!" Arthur Miller, The Crucible

Just saw The Old Vic matinee. Stunning epic and visceral production today ladies and gentleman. A standing ovation truly deserved. Big up yourself @cathy_hammond

[morelikemandsthaneminem]

A poem is never finished, it's just forgotten." by Dean Atta - I thought that was lovely. So dear poems You may feel like you have been brought in to this world and now you sit there on pages waiting to come alive to be read, to be performed, to be spat out, to be whispered, to be sang. You are important, you will realise your potential. Words, you were already great to begin with, that is why I chose to sit you together, punctuated in neat lines like studious children or industrious workers in an assembly line. I am now preparing myself, experiencing the world in ways to make not you, but me, more-better; to make you make sense, to me and in the meanwhile I cannot wait to breathe life in to you and make shapes to give you the honour of the physical forms you deserve. Until then, don't be quiet, tell your other friends, the other words to keep visiting me. Yours Truly. J

Dean Atta