Oh so Special

Let us pause for a moment to reflect on the unsung genius behind the Special K marketing campaign. Well, what's your first thought when a woman in red appears on your TV screen? For me at least it's always the same - "ah, must be Special K".

So ingrained is that pernicious “stay special” message that even when the newer chocolate-loaded or honey-soaked varieties find their way into my shopping basket they’re accompanied by a definite feeling of virtue, like I’ve made the healthy choice and picked up something really wholesome.

Today, munching Oats ‘n’ Honey out of the box as my virtuous post-dinner snack, it crossed my mind to wonder whether this was actually the case. 3% fat really sounds too good to be true: what’s the catch?

I can only assume it's stuffed with crack.

Plans and schemes

For the next week and a half I’m a woman on a mission. Every day of this hard-earned leave I will do something extravagant, unjustifiable and completely credit-crunch inappropriate.

I’ve spent a relaxing weekend doing useful house things (aka clearing out the wardrobe for an influx of shiny new things) and making plans. The Boy du Jour is off work for the week too – actually, he's off work entirely, but that’s another story – but the upshot is that I have a partner in crime for all my brilliant ideas. Who knows, he may even have a few of his own ;)

"It's not that big of a deal"

It’s been nearly two months since Almostalady Jr upped sticks and moved out to Philly to change the world with some mysterious branch of high-energy Physics. Reports of progress (which seems to be made mostly in local cocktail bars) are good, although I have yet to see any real commitment to online communication. Where, pray tell, is the blog? Where the Twitter feed? Surely a new ex-pat in the land of the free has some worthwhile news to share with friends and family at home, especially one week before an election that has the world waiting with baited breath?

Still, we make do with email and MSN, and even with this periodic communication I've become aware of a rather worrying situation. After only eight weeks away from the motherland, it appears my scholarly Cambridge-educated sister is losing her grip on the English language. The biggest sins so far? “That’s hella awesome” followed swiftly by “It’s not that big of a deal”.

It's not that big of a deal? Really? Dear lord, save us from the mangling of the English language by lazy Physicists. I can’t think of any way of curing her except by tying her to a chair over Christmas and reading her “Eats Shoots and Leaves” til her head explodes.

Speaking of which... happy Hallowe'en!

Three for three

Hello, you lovely people. It's been a while since we've spoken!

In my absence it seems I've been tagged in a couple of quite entertaining memes - you'll have to indulge me over the next couple of days while I sift through the best of the bunch.

Some time ago I was tagged by Big Tim Bond in a remarkably prevalent meme started somewhere in the depths of Twitter. Now, let's see, how did it go...

My top 3 non-work websites
1. Gawker
Gawker really is second to none in the well-targeted bitchiness stakes. It can't be healthy to love a website this much and yet, somehow, I do.
2. Go Fug Yourself
Thank the lord for people who share my views on leggings. GFY is a bit of a pop culture phenomenon and deserves every bit of kudos that comes its way. Ever looked at red carpet starlets and wondered what on earth was going through their minds? My friend, you are not alone.
3. The Art of Manliness
In these politically sticky times it's just so gosh-darned hard for a man to know what it means to be a man. Want to Man Up like the real thing? This is the site for you. Sometimes funny, sometimes useful and sometimes just really thought-provoking.

Top 3 karaoke songs
I don’t karaoke, but if I did...
1. Grease Megamix – I don’t really feel this one needs any justification
2. Living on a Prayer – if I'm drunk enough to sing I’m going to want to sing this
3. Build me up Buttercup - the original and the best!

Top 3 cocktails
Making this decision is really what's taken the time. Seriously, just three?
1. The classic champagne cocktail
They call it classic for a reason - like an Yves Saint Laurent tuxedo, it will never go out of style. Just for heaven's sake don't try and make it with Cava.
2. Champagne Mojito
I have always loved Mojitos. Rum, mint, demerera sugar and club soda - could anything possibly be better? Well yes, as it happens. I met this little gem a few weeks ago when out with a client and it frankly made my day. Night. Whatever.
3. Cosmopolitan
Believe it or not, it's not always about the champagne. I love a good Cosmo - something I used to think was impossible to screw up until Emily took me bar hopping in Letchworth. I ask you - who in their right mind would put grenadine in a Cosmo? Still, that unfortunate experience aside, a well-made Cosmo is a thing of beauty.

I think I'm right in saying that there are still some people who haven’t shared their answers with the world... so take it away Polly and Rob!

Champagne Thursday...

Last night I did something I haven't done in a long time: I got blitzed on a schoolnight.

Yes, yes, I know. I'm 29 now, I'm old enough to know better. I really don't think you should judge me too harshly though - those six bottles of champagne were just me doing my bit to hold up the economy. Keeping the money circulating, y'know?

However, the evening has reminded me of the many, many reasons I no longer go drinking with work. I distinctly recall revealing my Secret Plan for World Domination at some length to my unfortunate client; I also have dim recollections of telling some stories from my misspent youth that perhaps, with hindsight, would have been better left unmentioned.

It all gets a bit hazy towards the end and I have very little idea how or when I got home - although I do remember finding myself in Highbury some time around midnight. (I don't live in Highbury so to be honest your guess is as good as mine..)

What I do recall is a very unimpressed boyfriend waiting for me when I eventually stumbled through the front door. Apparently I called him several times en route to insist that he order me a pizza (I didn't want to do it myself) and while I don't recall exactly how the conversation went, he isn't really speaking to me this morning.

Which is a shame.

Someone also seems to have gone into a bit of a frenzy with the garlic and herb dip in my living room.

Good times all round :)

Star(bucks) People

I spent a few productive hours on Tuesday morning hooked into the WiFi in Starbucks while the o2 store next door tried to fix my comatose mobile phone.

That much time in a coffeeshop makes for an interesting people watching exercise. Who are you, my Starbucks-bound friends, and what brings you to this high street store at 10.30 on a Tuesday morning?

A sad man in a business suit sat at the next table to mine for the best part of an hour, staring out of the window and occasionally scribbling a brief note in the dog-eared pad that sat beside him. Who are you, sad suited man? Are you a small part of the chaos in the City, escaping to your coffee-house haven to decide what to do next?

A group of screaming tweenie girls whirled in like banshees about 10.45, grabbed all the croissants left in the place and swept out, a distant cry of “he said WHAT” dissolving in their wake. The sad man watched them go and made a few notes on his pad.

A woman with a laptop came in and settled on one of the large twin sofas. We caught each other’s eye briefly, but she looked away before I could offer a co-conspiratorial smile. Two other women with enormous but empty pushchairs wheeled in and sat around her on the sofas, sipping milkless coffees and talking a bit too loudly for the comparative quiet of the morning. The woman with the laptop ignored them stoicly for a while but eventually gathered up her things and departed.

As she walked past me I couldn’t help noticing that her shoes needed reheeling.

By now the sad man was engaged in an industrious spot of notepad-scribbling. He barely looked up as two twenty-something creative types walked in, all trendy jeans and spiky hair. “I can’t believe she put that forward,” one of them was saying. “I mean, isn’t that exactly what she suggested for the campaign last year?”

Curiosity made me watch them to the counter, where they ordered eight takeaway coffees between them and left, trays in tow. One of them ran into a pushchair on the way out; he didn’t stop to apologise, but the women on the sofas barely noticed.

The sad man stopped scribbling again. Elbows on the table and chin in his hands he was staring out of the window and slowly sloshing the dregs of his coffee around the bottom of the cup. With a sigh, he got up to leave.

“Have a nice day,” I said to him on impulse, giving him my best-and-brightest smile, the one I keep for special occasions and presents I really wanted.

He looked around for a moment, surprised, before focusing on me. “Oh… thanks,” he said, and smiled back.

And then he was gone, and I got back to work.

Does sexism still exist?

Emily posted about this a while ago and it’s been playing on my mind for a while.

I have a number of friends – most, interestingly, made through my professional rather than my personal life – who tease me affectionately about calling myself a feminist, and ask me why I think I need to defend a cause that our mothers already won.

So, after some thought, here’s my explanation.

I rarely experience sexism in either my personal or professional life. I’ve been very lucky. In fact, the only incident that springs instantly to mind is a business pitch from a year or two ago where I was the only woman in the room. The potential client – a 50-something white male, self-declared success story and “industry visionary” – sat at the head of the table, winked at me (or rather, at my cleavage) when I entered the room, and spent the rest of the pitch looking through me, cracking crude jokes and ending each one with “well of course if there wasn’t a young lady present I could tell you some REAL stories, ho ho ho”.

Just thinking about it is making my blood boil all over again. But that’s beside the point. The point is that I can count those experiences on one hand, and I try to remember every day that this is a rare, rare thing. I have friends in other industries who can top my little handful of stories with one petty insult for every day of their working lives, one comment that made them uncomfortable, one little example of how they’ve been taken for granted, put down, laughed at or patronised simply because they are women.

My friends and I represent a very, very small sample of the world. I try to remember that, too. I try to bear in mind the hundreds, thousands and millions of women who aren’t as fortunate as me. The unlucky ones who fall into a job where they are undervalued, sidelined and bullied because of their gender, or who find themselves in a destructive or abusive relationship they can’t escape from. And, of course, all of those who are born and brought up in cultures where being a woman automatically makes you a second-class citizen.

There’s no denying that those jobs, those relationships and those cultures exist. That’s why I can’t let the small slights go. To me, it’s just an insult I can shrug off; but it’s also part of a bigger, nastier picture that stretches across the world. And it’s not just the world three thousand miles away - this is the world just down your street, where these things are happening every day, whether we see them or not.

So yes, I’m a feminist, and I’m proud to say so. What does that mean? It means I believe that we are all equals, that we deserve the same opportunities in life, and that we should be be judged on something beyond our genders.

Sadly, that's still a lot to ask.