Monday: museum, noodles plus sole to sole

Myself and his Grace, The Duke, boarded a double decker bus and headed towards Greenwich today.  If you've never been it's an amazing place to visit and I can personally recommend the guided tours which I ventured upon last summer - prior to the Olympics taking the whole area over for months on end.  Now, the top deck of a London omnibus is a sacred place you'd imagine - delightfully clean, full of quiet people minding their own business and generally being a pleasure to be around?  Well, you'd be wrong, but I have a particular penchant for sitting in the front seat and 'driving' the bus, which is probably something I should have grown out of by now, but no, it's still a huge thrill.  The noise of other people's music is truly awful and I am going to download a CD of Mrs Mills' greatest hits onto my phone and play it out loud until the louts desist their detestable rap music.

Noodles: yum, my favourite - however I would provide some advice to the chap in the neighbouring table - don't slurp your food, simply twirl your noodles from a fork onto the spoon and consume accordingly.  Failing that, ask for a tiny bowl, lift it up and tuck in that way via the medium of chopsticks.  Also, do try to engage your female lunch companion in a form of conversation instead of constantly checking your smartphone every two minutes.  Surely this kind of behaviour is incredibly rude?  Saying that, I haven't read the latest edition of Debretts, perhaps this is now the acceptable face of modern manners? 

Shoes, yep, that's what you're reading to hear about - or perhaps you're ignoring the text in favour of the pictures, who knows?  Anyway I wore my while leather Converse today and noted that when I was walking up the hill in Greenwich Park I aquaplaned a little too much for my liking and noted that I need a cleated sole in the winter months.  When I got home I photographed the sole for posterity, which I agree is an incredibly boring thing to do and smacks of obsession in my book - whatever, don't judge me!  Here are the results:

The eagle-eyed amongst you will note that the grip is slowly but surely wearing away and is causing a smooth surface to emerge.  Converse grips aren't great anyway, it's probably because they're primarily a baseball shoe and as such, weren't meant to be worn as a casual shoe about town.  Personally, I don't care, I love them and currently own this pair as well as the following pairs: red lo, sparkly silver lo and pink hi.  I hate spelling the 'lo' and 'hi' like that, but that's the way that they're expressed - lo meaning the shoe type and hi, well the boot style.

This is a picture of the sole of my Superga turquoise blue casual plimsolls I am currently wearing; duly placing upon my feet to undertake the school run.  Yes, the nobbly nature of the surface provides much more pavement purchase in my view.  However, I must reiterate that the sizing is somewhat smaller than Converse - I think it's because they're manufactured in Italy and they never produce particularly large sizes anyway. 

Sunday: pedicure and planning

I thought you'd all appreciate a picture of my freshly pedicured feet.  Well, here they are anyway - looking a little blotchy and the polish is slightly skewy, but there you go, clearly I don't have a steady hand - or indeed 'A Slow Hand', or is that just The Pointer Sisters?  They're painted in a Boots No7 blue - I did have a fan ask me to paint them black, but I'm not a Goth and I think it would depress me at this time of year.  Saying that, he could have been a fan of The Rolling Stones?  Who knows?  No anyway.

I have listed a couple of pairs of cute slipper socks on eBay - well for UK buyers anyway.  They're rather splendid, but they don't fit - my sizeable feet make them 'ping' off, which isn't good.  Actually, talking of footwear, which I've no doubt you'd like me to do, I'm wearing my black Shoefayre fake synthetic uggs at the moment and they are making my poor plates of meat feel a little clammy.  Such is life!

Friday: more than a touch of frost and looking forward to summer

Today was frosty, yadda yadda we know that - get on with it!  Ok, I will and just to let you know that my morning was taken up by visiting the local library, getting lost amongst the myriad of streets containing semi-detached houses, posting off an eBay parcel in the post office and listening to the end of a grisly bloke's conversation in the Co-op "...and I told him to move his car out of the entrance as 'e was blockin' it.  'e was lucky, if I'd 'ad my boy wiv me then 'e woulda decked 'im."  Oh the joys of living in the London area.

Would you like to see a picture of me wearing my summer Birkenstocks which was taken a few weeks ago?  I bet you would, so here it is:

Dark patent red is one of my favourite colours, but I'm not a huge fan of the Birkenstock Madrid style of sandal because they tend to flap too much and as such, I worry that they'll fall of my feet should I run for a bus and replicate the opening titles to the 1970s British Classic Man About The House where Chrissy loses her shoe on a London Routemaster Bus.  Saying that, apart from the re-imagined Boris Routemasters which run on the #38 service there aren't many of the older versions still in use other than the #15 heritage route.

Ok, I fully admit that I'm running out of shoe/tight and sock things to discuss.  I mean I've a few more pairs up my sleeve or indeed languishing on the shoe racks, under my bed, lying around the house and generally being trip hazards but it's running out of steam so I'll probably turn my considerable talents to penning some erotic fiction.  I'm attending a workshop on Thursday evening so I'll keep you posted but it'll be another blog in my series so keep reading! 

Wednesday: a day off scuppered + washing up bowl + tights

Yeah, I'm really scraping the barrel now for inspiration aren't I?  Well, today I decided to take a day's leave and potter round the shops, house and do a bit of tidying etc.  First of all I wandered into the fantastic fashion/home emporium we call BHS to see whether I could find a suitable winter coat, but nothing really fitted the bill: I resembled the rectangle from Mister Maker (I do understand that anybody who hasn't got any children and doesn't watch CBeebies won't really get that reference.)  At least I could overhear a bizarre and somewhat shrill conversation taking place between a few members of staff though, that really made my day.

My son, The Earl, fell over in the playground and had to be sent home - he's now lying supine on the sofa enjoying the rest and attention.

So what's all this about a washing up bowl?  Well, you get what you pay for, that's for sure.  Heed my warning!  I purchased a new bowl from Wilkinson's a couple of weeks ago for the princely sum of £1.69 and I can't say that I'm particularly impressed so far because it's too narrow to fit a plate in properly and cannot hold a candle to its Addis rival (which retails at £4.99).  It's also constructed from very thin plastic.  Disappointing.

...and tights?  The new purple pair were worn yesterday and they proceeded to fall down all day, which as you can imagine, was both uncomfortable and annoying.  I don't believe that it's particularly seemly to hoist them up on the London Underground.  However, to put the incident into context, there was a gross man sitting in front of me wearing a kilt with his legs splayed apart and to add insult to injury, chewing gum with his mouth open.  Lovely. 

Monday: tights again

My regular mooch around the shops was punctuated with a trip to M&S for inspiration on how to spend both my gift vouchers and the other points-driven coupons I'm spammed with via the post.  Anyway, today's trip to the changing room included: a short red cord jeans-style skirt, a pair of slim fit faun cords and a classic white shirt.  Now I tried them all on with a hopeful heart and nothing suited me at all - the skirt was too short, the trousers too tight and made me resemble an overstuffed sausage and the shirt was see through.  Now manufacturers of white shirts, surely this is a common problem and why don't you invest more in the thickness of the cotton?  If I'm paying £29.50 for a garment I don't wish to wear a camisole under it or worry whether my male colleagues are staring at me in an alarming fashion during a tedious PowerPoint presentation stuffed full of pie charts do I?  Wise up.

So, what did I spend my gift vouchers you may ask?  Well ask away because the answer's a three pack of tights.  Yeah, hardly a luxury item is it but necessary all the same.  I find that the 'extra large' in M&S is a perfect fit for me and no, I'm not gargantuan - I'm simply curvy with very long legs - like a spider with a deep love of McVitie's dark chocolate digestive biscuits if you please.  This pack which I've handily photographed for your enjoyment/delectation/information etc shows a mixed range of colours including purple, graphite and black.  I may wear the purple ones tomorrow, they're 40 denier so I trust they'll be warm enough :)

Boring 2012, bedsocks but no broomsticks!

I went to Boring 2012 today in east London - for the uninitiated it's an annual conference organised by the awesome James Ward in response to the cancellation of 'Interesting' back in 2010 so if my calculations are correct it's the third time it's taken place and I'm very pleased to report that I attended last year's event too.  Today's talks took a diverse trajectory - ranging from presentations on the merits of using supermarket self-service checkouts, toast, the history behind yellow lines, shop fronts and the merits of a Yamaha keyboard which had been discontinued in 2003.

It was strange sitting in the venue, York Hall in Bethnal Green, that how darn similar everybody looked.  With my trendy geeky glasses and Doc Martens diva boots you'd think I'd be unique wouldn't you, but no, it's not so.  At least my sense of humour is shared by many and for that, I'm a happy Duchess.  My hand also features in an official photograph as I was the first in the queue, sad but true!

Oh yeah, bedsocks - how could I forget?  Well, last Monday I went to Asda and purchased two pairs of fluffy bedsocks which are really synthetic and cause my feet to sweat quite a lot.  Here's a picture of me wearing them, go on, have a long hard look and then retire somewhere private to really concentrate your [dirty] minds.  They don't fit that well though - they're a little small and the heel doesn't sit where it really should :(

Saturday: long beige socks and rain

My hubby, the Duke, mentioned that he'd been listening to Frank Skinner's radio show on Absolute Radio this morning when the titular 'Mr Radio' mentioned a fetish for women with large feet.  I wasn't around this morning as I was attending my weekly guitar lesson but as ever, I've managed to save it onto my iPod directly from iTunes.  I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned my deep love for this show on this blog but if I haven't I'm going to write about it now.  Basically it's Frank Skinner, a well-known stand up comedian and presenter in the UK banters with his two sidekicks, Emily Dean, the deputy editor of InStyle Magazine and stand-up comedian Alun Cochrane every Saturday morning between 8am and 12pm - or an hour later if you're listening to Absolute 60s/70s/80s/90s/00s.  It's just bloody brilliant, the three of them just bounce hilarity off one another and it really cheers me up when I'm listening to them whilst carrying out a myriad of tedious household tasks.  Frank Skinner is an absolute genius: like many people I wasn't a huge fan of him during the 90s because I'd written him off of as a misogynistic football freak, but he's one of the cleverest, wittiest and just downright amusing celebrities around in my opinion.

I attended a Christmas Fete at a church I'd spent a great deal of my childhood attending this morning/early afternoon.  Like many fayres/fetes it was a bit rubbish but I managed to purchase three comedy DVDs, one of which, series three of Kath and Kim seems to be be region 4, so won't work in my player, here's hoping it plays via the laptop. 

I think I've already mentioned how much I adore the longer sock, so here's a picture of the pair I was wearing today.  Those with a deep love of orthopedic looking hosiery should get excited, but they're warm and comfortable as far as I'm concerned.  Are there people out there in the wider world who get excited by such things?  I bet there are - life's very odd.