Tired of being 'pear' or 'apple' shaped? Try one of these exciting new variations. From top to bottom, and left to right:
Globe: Well-rounded, or even spherical? This is you!
American Footballer: Shoulders like a bull, tapering towards some sort of waist.
Mature Globe: As for Globe, but wrinkly. Dark colours suit this shape. (Hah!)
Torpedo: Shape developed by lying prone for too long before a television.
Square: Solid rectangular English brick. Stout-hearted. Try a girdle.
Mature Torpedo: As for Torpedo, but over fifty five.
Ovoid: Substantial fatty deposits around the waist result in this characteristic form. In males, this shape may be termed the 'Beer Belly'.
Lozenge: A more angular version of the Ovoid.
Crescent: Shape developed by older women who have carried too many heavy burdens over the years.
This message is gluten-and-nut free.
Marc by Marc Jacobs, according to The Fashion supplement that appeared with my Saturday Guardian (September 2014): 'Now in the hands of Brit pair Luella Bartley and Katie Hillier, the label has regained serious momentum. The first collection was a statement of intent..', and nothing was more intentional than the blatant homage to market forces within the fashion industry made concrete with this in-your-face trainer. Times are a little rocky, but the intention is that profits should go up, and up, and up.
A quickie. Fat, again. It has come to my attention that the British are now top of the European league table in fatness. 'We're eating our way to disaster', and so on, say the newspapers. Apparently 67% of men and 57% of women in the UK are either overweight or obese, according to the Global Burden of Disease Study. ('What this?', you ask. I've no idea, but it's published in the Lancet Medical Journal, so it must be True) Still, it's nice to be top of something, isn't it? And a little bit of fat makes it easier to stay warm in winter.
I have a tendency to colour things up to see if they look more 'important'. I suspect I nearly always prefer them in plain old black and white. I leave the choice up to you.
I've recently returned from a brief cruise with my father. It sounds exciting, but it comprised only four nights on-board, in the company of several hundred pensioners. All very nice, although I found it difficult to keep up with the other guests when it came to eating (four lavish and delicious meals daily). Luckily for me, there was a gym in the 'basement', so my lower half was able to work off what my upper half was busy consuming.
Not my picture, I regret to say. It comes from Tomi Ungerer's 'Underground Sketchbook', a book that is brilliant and horrible in equal measure.
The Foreign Office has advised British nationals to avoid the Oxford Street area in central London, which has been designated an 'insecure region'. Thousands of shoppers have converged on the hotspot for the summer sales, with skirmishes breaking out in Primark, Topshop, and other sites of special interest. There have been several recorded incidents of aggressive and antisocial behaviour, numerous arrests and a handful of hospital admissions. An eye witness described scenes of devastation, with shoppers running rampage amongst the rails of bargain goods.
A spokesman for the Oxford Street Traders Association expressed surprise at the Foreign Office advice, saying that it was just business as usual, and that traders were happy with the sales figures.
Still no time to do blog pictures, so instead here's a warm weather trip down memory lane. These illustrations come from one of my favourite childhood books, an edition of 'The Arabian Nights', 'selected and retold for children by Gladys Davidson with many illustrations in colour and in black-and-white by Helen Stratton', printed circa 1910 (although the publishers, Blackie and Son Ltd, reissued it several times at later dates, with variations on the tales and illustrations included). The book lived at my French grandmother's house, and it was one of my rules of holiday behaviour that it was the first thing I read on our annual visits. This book and, especially, the rather lovely Art Nouveau-influenced illustrations by Miss Stratton, represented escape to another world, an exotic and magical place in which the landscapes, if not the plot lines, somewhat reflected the hot Mediterranean location of 'Villa Maite', as my grandparents' house was called. At the time, the likes of Dulac and Heathcote Robinson (in his romantic rather than his humorous work) were my favourite artists, and Helen Stratton was very much in the same mold. The extravagant gestures and exotic costumes (those turbans!), the pleated and flowing drapery, the curling smoke and piles of gold coins and jewels, the endlessly blue skies, were all mesmerising. The oriental fashions, heavily embroidered and sequinned, appealed to my budding sartorial tastes, and there were other fascinating details- the heroines, so often in distress, all seemed to possess long, serpentine and untamed hair. No sign of combs or plaits! And so many of the characters dispensed with shoes and ran around on their improbable errands in finely-drawn, bare (although often bejewelled) feet, despite the obviously rocky and snake-infested terrain they inhabited. A fabulous and perfect realm of the imagination.
River: n 1. a copious natural stream of water flowing in a channel to the sea or a lake, etc.
2. a large and disparate group of veins in the legs, affected by a condition (varicose) causing them to become dilated and swollen and hideously visible when the owner attempts to wear a skirt without the benefit of tights, usually during the spring and summer seasons; thereby generally necessitating expenditure on a product to disguise these veins, and consequential frustration when said product proves to be completely ineffective. An annual occurrence.
(Apologies for the reappearance of this drawing. Other business has got in the way of new work)
