L/A/R/K

Cupcakes

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 11:06:25 -0400

This cupcake phenomenon is getting way out of hand. Not so long ago, we had fairy cakes and bake sales, sure, but a cake was a cake and the cake was great. Carrot cake, Victoria Sponge, polenta cake, lemon drizzle, even chocolate cake if you like that sort of thing.

But all of a sudden, cupcakes are IN. Girls can not stop going on about them. I see numerous shady, angled pictures of cupcakes every day on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It is beyond a joke. They have become some sort of symbol to boring girls everywhere for cutness, homeliness and being “naughty” (shudder). All the same sort of girls who looooove to bake and wear nothing but ballet slippers and cropped Topshop leather jackets. Come on, you know the ones. They can go out with their girlfriends and eat cupcakes and post pictures of them while telling everyone how fat they have been that day and and then fall into the shoulder of a boy giggling.

But I just don’t understand it. CUPCAKES ARE NOT NICE. Sponge is good, muffins too, but when heaped with an absurd ratio of claggy, sickening, overly-sweet frosting it’s just a diabetic seizure waiting to happen.

You can cover them with edible glitter, bits of cookie or whatever you like, but they will never escape the fact that they are the cake equivalent of a Mister Whippy 99 dunked in sprinkles. Maybe good for a hit once in a while, but nothing compared to some orange and mascarpone Roskilly’s.

Hopefully one day this fanaticism will subside, and we can all come together and have a nice, grown-up tarte au citron.

(p.s I love girls really - not in that way though)

Photo

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 08:05:29 -0400

View some of my Woman & Home reviews here

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 11:15:58 -0400

View some of my Woman & Home reviews here

An inexhaustible list of things that annoy me

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 09:45:00 -0400

I’m not sure if it’s that I am really peculiarly prone to disliking things, or that maybe other people just hide their general displeasure with the world better. Possibly it is some innate vanity which so easily stirs the rage within me; that I have the best taste - since it is my own- and therefore something differing from that is inherently wrong and bad.

I have quite a strong moral conviction in the allowance of others to like and do what they so please, even if it is not my own choice, but these niggling pet peeves highlight to my supposedly liberal and understanding self the deep-rooted snobbery and cynicism which I evidently must possess.

These are a few of the things that drive me absolutely nuts:

- People who say “mooslee” for muesli.

- People who insist on pronouncing foreign words and names in an excruciating, affected semi-accent. Prime example: chorizo. Yeah I get it that you understand where your sausage is coming from and that you may even have been to spain, but when you’ve bought the damn thing from Morrisons and outside it’s cold and wet and very much England, you just sound like a prick.

- Eating spaghetti with a fork and spoon. NO.

- Whispering voice-overs in ads. Especially when the sound is so compressed that it’s possible to hear the actor’s big damp mouth as if they were right there in your ear. In fact, add to this: anybody whispering in my ear. That is just not on.

- Another advert no no: stupid kids with stupid kid voices. The Betty Crocker devil’s food cake and Oreo adverts stand alone here. Listening to a self-important little child talk is taxing at the best of times so I don’t really want to be forced to withstand it on my television - especially when said perpetrators seem to have mouths stuffed full of the aforementioned cake at the time of recording.

- Ketchup and mayonnaise squirted all over chips. ON THE SIDE PEOPLE.

- The dry end of a bad quality baguette. Likewise, any filled pastry in which the ratio of meat/cheese goodness is way below 50/50 - there is nothing worse than a delicious savoury bun let down by a plain and doughy ending.

- People sitting on the outside seat on the bus. Can there be any surer way of knowing someone is a rude, selfish, and doesn’t even care if people know? (At least try to hide it man)

OK so that’s it for now - trying to recall all of my “pet peeves” is putting me in a bad mood, and it’s sunny outside.

whatweeatinukraine: salmon with salad mix and cherry...

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 09:16:46 -0400

whatweeatinukraine:

salmon with salad mix and cherry tomatoes

62 UAH / $7.7 at Oliva, Kiev

That looks bloody delicious - I want it now!

moika-palace: Holyday, James Tissot c. 1876.

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 14:04:50 -0400

moika-palace:

Holyday, James Tissot c. 1876.

Man Upset Over Sandwich Order Calls 911

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 05:23:23 -0400

Man Upset Over Sandwich Order Calls 911

newyorker: “She would leave him, she thought, as soon as the...

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 05:20:28 -0400

newyorker:

“She would leave him, she thought, as soon as the petunias bloomed,” the writer announces, before going on to tell how “she” finally manages to leave behind her petunias and overbearing husband and then tries to make a go of it in New York, only to have her husband drag her back home six days later, crushed and exhausted, reduced to taking a perverse pleasure in thwarting his determination to rescue a garden she knows he cannot abide. “McCarthy is always her best heroine,” someone later observed. And there is much truth to this. But in McCarthy’s best stories no one is spared her irony or her contempt, not even the character she most closely resembles.

Mary McCarthy, Edmund Wilson, and the Short Story that Ruined a Marriage: http://nyr.kr/KOVhZh

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past"

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 20:30:40 -0400

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”

- The Great Gatsby

Summer Echoes

Thu, 31 May 2012 12:16:18 -0400

With the lengthening of days and warming of temperatures, sound seems to mutate from the dull and tinny silence of winter into a presence that encapsulates the very essence of summer.

I have often wondered whether the heat itself does somehow work to compress and expand summer noises, so that the murmurings of this nostalgic season become fuller and more apparent; swollen with the thick, hot, breath of life that is now creeping out of doors.

Summer has arrived when one can wander down a suburban road, or lay on top of the duvet with the window open, and know at which point you lie in the calender by simply staying still and listening. A distant car, a lawn mower, road works, a bee, a bike chain whirring, an aeroplane….some bored kid pissing off their parent. All somehow louder than they had been before.

The cacophony becomes melodious, bringing with it a familiarity wrought from those same experiences which have been relived over decades and centuries. I remember the feeling of straight-leg jeans and cotton t-shirts over warm, flat-chested skin. Hot brick beneath cold thighs and the damp cool of the earth that sits around the bottom of trees.

Miami cannibal zombie-like attack linked to powerful ‘bath salts’ drug

Wed, 30 May 2012 12:01:21 -0400

Miami cannibal zombie-like attack linked to powerful ‘bath salts’ drug

Photo

Wed, 30 May 2012 11:23:00 -0400

omg soooo lush

Wed, 30 May 2012 11:21:45 -0400

Twitter

Wed, 09 May 2012 10:29:10 -0400

@lucyaaark , btw

Having a tough time at school when I was five….

Sun, 06 May 2012 14:46:10 -0400

Having a tough time at school when I was five….

Jassy Grez

Fri, 04 May 2012 13:48:00 -0400

Jat Jat is one of my bezzies, and is about to be a big star. So if you don’t know, get to know!

She is beautiful and has a great voice, so listen to her song ‘Walk’!

Does rightmove make me a pervert?

Fri, 04 May 2012 13:11:00 -0400

I am utterly obsessed with rightmove.co.uk.

I’m not really looking to buy a new house, or even to rent one in the near future. In fact, I’m pretty happy where I am. So why do I continually stay up until 3am endlessly scrolling through pages of properties? Why exactly do I want to know what sort of house I could buy that has three bedrooms and is no more than five hundred thousand pounds, in Brighton?

I seriously can’t stop myself. On the bus, as soon as I wake up, even when I am supposedly having a conversation with my boyfriend…I’m on rightmove.

I probably should back this up with some sort of informed research into the subject, but instead I have a few ideas about my own desire to browse, and in turn the rise of property websites. I mean, seriously, not everyone on these sites can be looking to move. I’m not alone, I swear it!

My thesis follows thus: the main reason behind a property porn habit is a curious mix of voyeurism, escapism, idealism and aspiration. Basically put, its good for people who don’t like to live in the real world.

First off, who doesn’t like to snoop around other people’s houses? I challenge any human being to walk past a property that has its curtains open and not stare absent-mindedly into this little snapshot of supposedly private home life. Likewise, it is impossible to be left alone in someone else’s house and fail to take a peek in every single room - and maybe into a few drawers too if you know you’re safe for a prolonged period of time. Take this, and multiply it by all the houses for sale in the UK right now.

On top of this, I, like many others, dream of the day when I can move on from renting shoddy flats with manky sealant round the bath. “My life is shit”, I’ll think to myself, “when am I going to win big on a scratch card so I can buy my double-fronted dream house?”….”and, as I’m on the subject, what would it look like?”

In fact, I spend a disproportionate amount of time wondering what my life could be like when I finally grow up and get some money. Rightmove simply makes it easier to visualise. And in the meantime, I’ll tease myself with flats that are just slightly more expensive than the one I currently reside in.

But its not all me, me, me. The trend in property websites says a lot about our consciousness as a nation. We are living in a time when no one can be happy with their lot - the desire, and resources that allow us to know how and where other people are living means that the grass will always seem greener. We not only imagine what we could have, but can see it, right there, as evidence of what we lack. The fantastic house round the corner on that lovely road sits there in all its glory on our computer screens as we point at it and scream to whoever will listen, “Thats what I want! Why don’t I have it?!”

This isn’t the 80’s anymore. There’s no quick bucks to be made, and the majority of my peers won’t be able to actually buy a house any time in the near future. However, websites like rightmove will continue to be a source of masochistic pleasure to myself and others who cannot free themselves from the imagined self they so long for, and who still can’t help but peer through strangers’ windows.

(N.B my imagined self is a kind of Virginia Woolf character, with a lovely house, who sits at a writing table and eats cheese boards while staring out of the window)

Bullshit on the bus

Wed, 02 May 2012 11:04:10 -0400

On a windswept shore, unsheltered by the rocky outlook that straddles its limits, stands a figure unnamed and unnamable. All zest and vigour inside once, this shell is blank and bitter.
Only here can a moment become continual; endless oblivion, silent sanctuary, undisturbed.
The salt air traverses stones like dry ice and whips at this figure’s feet, the grey-blue day is dusk or noon - we cannot tell.
But this place, where gentle noise is never-ending and peace is given freely, protects the figure with its brutality, and fills the void within.

Who Will Comfort Toffle?

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:04:00 -0400

A friend of mine gave me this book to read last night. We have a shared appreciation of children’s books, and although I know the Moomin Valley and its creator Tove Jansson, I had never actually read this (probably most famous) edition.

Safe to say, it was brilliant. Ethereal, beautiful, awe-inspiring in its absolute creativity. But more than that, there was something comforting in its strangeness, a feeling that you get only from the best children’s books. The mix of naivety and simple, moralistic, but precise knowledge reminded me not only of the way a child can shock an adult by seeing life much more clearly than expected, but also of the feeling of being a child oneself.

When I was young I never worried about my imagination. I didn’t fret about my ideas or the basis of my thought. I could create anything, draw and write whatever I felt, and there was such freedom in that. I would construct characters, their names long and convoluted, with hyphens and accents, just because I could. Version’s of myself and my life, but transported and re-imagined. This book bought this feeling back to me. The most memorable and fantastic books like these don’t try to be a certain thing or tap into a certain market - they express the joy of being a child. Think of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are or In The Night Kitchen (a personal favourite). These are books which transcend time and age. When I was young they were brave and exciting, and now, as an almost-adult, they remind me of my dreams and aspirations, and that someone understood my own strangeness, then and now.

It also reminded me to keep those feelings as an adult. After I read the book I turned it over in my hands, marvelling at the genius of the author and the mind-blowing illustration. I felt sad. Sad that I couldn’t create something so wonderful, when as a child I had felt so much power in my creations. And so I remembered what is really important - to keep trying to do what you love. Maybe what you love isn’t a particular job or a position, but it is putting that joy and creativity into whatever you do; remembering your real self.

Maybe I’ll try writing a kid’s book!

A quick review of probably my favourite restaurant.

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 10:58:00 -0400

I have been to Tayyabs approximately 25 times. Well, in reality I haven’t counted, but it’s safe to say that I have been many, many times, sometimes twice in one week.

It’s old news now I’m sure, having won countless accolades and reviews by every critic and food blogger imaginable, but I love Tayyabs. I don’t even really like curries that much, but I love Tayyabs.

It’s not just the food that makes it a brilliant restaurant, but the atmosphere and pure joy of the whole experience means that this is a reliable place for a delicious dinner that is exciting, invigorating and in the end, makes you feel as if you have achieved something by dining there.

I have a few friends who find the whole ordeal to be too much effort – they shrink away from the hour-long queues and surprise steam facials courtesy of sizzling platters of meat being whisked past your nose. They want a nice, relaxed evening. However, in my opinion, there is nothing worse than an empty restaurant. I will downright refuse to eat somewhere if there is only one other couple eating in a silent room, and with Tayyabs, there is never that fear. It is absolutely always full, loud and hot, the air thick with the smell of meat and spices. This is a place that is perfect for big parties and friendly gatherings (although you will without doubt be too full to go on to anywhere afterwards), and with a relaxed BYO policy, the appeal is obvious.

Lamb chops, pummelled into flavourful oblivion come piled high with seekh kebabs, masala fish and tandoori chicken; ghee-covered naans are fresh and make rice an unnecessary addition, and the deliciously oily karahi curries and intense, almost black depths of a famous portion of ‘dry meat’ complete a meal which, for less than £20 a head, leaves you close to comatose and in need of a long shower.

Tayyabs will always hold a special place in my heart. I’ve had birthdays and anniversaries there, and even with my visits continually increasing, a night out at this Punjabi institution always feels like a momentous occasion.