Women are not necessarily more trouble than men when it comes to shopping

On Saturday Paul and I met his family for shopping in Carnaby Street/Covent Garden. The men were looking for shirts for the wedding. The ladies were casually shopping for shoes. It took Paul’s mum, Ann, and I about ten minutes to find exactly the shoes we wanted. The gentlemen spent the rest of the day arguing amongst themselves and dragging us in and out of various shops refusing to accept any helpful assistance and displaying a level of pickiness that would astound even the biggest fashionista. By the end of the day they had achieved some, but not all of their shopping goals.

Don’t sit near the belly dancer

After Saturday’s shopping spree we went for dinner at a gorgeous North African restaurant called, Souk. The food and atmosphere were brilliant and they even had a belly dancer to entertain the guests. Unfortunately the area in which the belly dancer was performing was quite small and when she flung her arm out in a particularly aggressive dance move, she smacked me square in the face, leaving me dazed and with a headache that won’t quite recede. Lesson learned!

One man’s trash, is another man’s treasure

Last weekend Paul and I cleared out our wardrobe and ended up with the glorious pile you see below, finally enabling us to see what we actually have in there. While at least half of the stuff in there was not in a state to be worn, the rest is just not… us… Most of it will be finding its way to the British Heart Foundation but a few bits were adopted by friends, making me wonder… why don’t more of us do clothes swaps? If we did more freecycling in communities there would be less rubbish to get rid of, people would save money and those shoes you thought were amazing but were impossible to walk in might just net you next year’s winter coat. All of that said though, I don’t think anyone wants my five year old unmatched socks…

We are a long way away from gender equality

We spent some time this weekend watching highlights from Glastonbury and ended up watching some of Beyonce’s set. Now, I don’t want to start up some kind of sexual politics argument, but if any male performers came out in a jacket and a pair of underpants and thrust their crotch at the audience no one would take them seriously. However for a female artist, who is arguably talented despite not being someone I ever want to listen to, has trade on her body and sexuality in order to be taken seriously. Even sadder is that Beyonce is the first EVER female Glasto headliner. I am going to hold out hope that Adele will become the role model my daughters look up to one day but I have to admit that that hope is a bit dim. Like one of my friends said on twitter this weekend, the next time you meet a little girl, don’t comment on how pretty she is, ask her what she’s reading. We train girls from a young age to focus on their physical appearance for validation without even realising we’re doing it…