The Alice

I have made my career in working with computers for a reason. Computers, and the internet, are predictable. You do A using method B and get the result of C. There are very rarely any problems, and if there are Google always has the answer.

Parenting is totally different. If you do the bath, baby massage, book and quiet time it does not necessarily mean Elfie will sleep. More often than not she will end up downstairs with us wide awake, and then we have to do a few relay runs up and down the stairs to switch on lullabies and pick up dummies before sleep arrives.

And then, one night, BOOM. She will go down straight to sleep after her bath and we think we’ve cracked it. We can cook properly, drink wine and watch crap TV. Blissful.

Until the next evening, when she’ll be up again, wide awake and wanting to be entertained.

There is no answer for this on Google… argh!

Originally posted on my mumplusone blog.

This week’s Gallery theme is ‘Still Life’ which was a tricky one for me: I don’t tend to take many photographs of inanimate objects as I prefer to shoot people (with the exception of food…) so I dug into my Flickr archive to see what I could find.

Cupcakes!!!

This photo is very representative of the changes our lives are going through at the moment: shot at my very first London Fashion Week, it is the cupcake breakfast that was served at Rani Jones’s S/S010 Presentation. It was a great day – I remember drinking three glasses of champagne before 11am. My very talented friend LouLou had teamed up with Rani to accessorize the collection and I was so excited to be around all that gorgeous clothing.

Of course, there is no LFW up in the Midlands so it’s an occasion I will have to sadly say goodbye to for now, but I wouldn’t give up our new house, baby and business for a million fashion weeks (even Paris or Milan).

My journey to work in the morning isn’t very exciting. My train goes directly into Moorgate (I get off for my office at Old Street) and carts hundreds of Lawyers, Accountants and Bankers in to their day jobs. What strikes me every morning is how miserable they all look. Black suits, black faces. I just want to shake them and tell them to CHEER UP!

I wonder what they think of me; I like to dress to express myself and would consider myself pretty feminine. I like dresses, colours, heels. I like trends, fashion magazines and style blogs. What I wear can make (or break) my confidence as it’s such an integral part of who I am – working for a magazine myself means we are all fairly style-concious and there is an non-spoken but implied work dress code (I can’t describe it, but if I had to I would probably just say ‘trendy’. It’s weird).

I notice people that stand out on the train in their appearance – as I imagine I do against the sea of corporate black and grey. Yesterday there was a woman opposite me, I would guess in her 40s, with a big bouffant hairdo and a full-length sequin trenchcoat. My first reaction was to pick my jaw up off the floor, but then I got to thinking about personal style, and how it reflects who we are and makes an impression on others. This woman had tight shiny leggings on that I initially thought were perhaps not quite right for a woman of her age, and her sequinned coat was definitely ‘out there’ – but then I realised that I am no-one to judge.

The woman looked confident. She looked happy. And isn’t that the most important thing? I’ve already said how what I wear really reflects my attitude and state of mind – as I’m sure is the case with millions of other women out there. If I think I look good, I feel a million dollars, and this woman looked like she felt a million dollars. In that instant of realisation my mindset switched from disliking what the woman was wearing – judging her, even – to having a massive respect for her.

Coincidentally, one of my favourite fashion bloggers Mademoiselle Robot wrote a post yesterday (“What is age appropriate?”) after receiving some comments about the way she dresses in relation to her age, and I was pleased to see the consensus is: as long as you’re happy, fuck em. I’ve been having some struggles with this lately as I want to keep my own style during pregnancy and into motherhood, but I don’t want people to look at me and my style differently now I’m pregnant. I like my miniskirts, I like my tight clothes; as long as I can hang on to my size 10 labels why can’t I wear them? Pleasingly Laetitia agrees. As a mum of a 2 year old herself she wore her miniskirts right to the bitter end, and as I said to her, by then I will be used to people looking at my crotch.

(Nothing like a bit of crotch smut on a Monday Morning, huh?)

Fashion week is coming up, and although I won’t be at as many shows as I can fit into one day this time – it’s amazing the stamina a champagne and cupcake breakfast can give you – I have some meetings to attend and will sneak along to the press area for the free Toni & Guy haircut and MAC goody bag. And you know what I will be wearing? My heels, miniskirt and million dollar confidence.

(Top photo snapped by me at last season’s Fashion Week. Man in skirt, heels and beard? Why not. Bottom photo is me and 2 crazy Canadian models/dancers at a party from the same Fashion Week.)