I keep forgetting all the AMAZING ideas I have for posts...

Seriously, I do have 'em, like some mothers, but they just disappear as soon as I have to get off the train/answer the phone/think about cake instead. So here is a random assortment of the thoughts I CAN remember from recent times.

What is UP with these weird "wet-look-fake-leather" leggings all and sundry seem to be sporting these days? Fucking HID-E-OUS. They make you look like you've done a really long pee in your trousers. Ditto harem pants which just make me look at otherwise nice-looking, grown women and think "she wants her nappy changing". None of this is good, girls, and deep down you know it.

I really hope Whitney Houston isn't back with ol' man trouble Bobby Brown. Come on Whitney, RISE ABOVE. You sing How Will I know, ffs, you can rise above ALLES.

Why oh why do Germans love making cakes out of Quark so much?

What IS Quark?

I really like Kate Nash and wish she was my friend. Her new video is so poppy and snappy and fun. And she just looks so cute and pretty in a very unpolished way. As a very unpolished girl myself I find this comforting and happy-making....Somewhat annoyingly I've just had a closer look at her in the video and she does look very polished indeed make-up wise. But you know what I mean. She's not one of these American maniacs who looks like they've been varnished. That and she advocates reading a book or hanging out with oneself instead of agonising over rivals in LURVE. Wise words, Kate my liebe.

Right, I'd best be off. Have to shower before bed as they're turning our hot water off at 7.a.m tomorrow. Thanks guys, you rock. Particularly when you empty the bottle bins BEFORE SUNRISE (seriously, how is that normal?). In the spirit of grooming and wanting to be pretty and so forth I am going to try to plait my hair wet and then let it dry into lovely crinkley waves for the morrow whilst I get my beauty sleep. In all probabilty though this will fail and you should keep an eye out tomorrow for a woman who appears to have stapled a Yorshire terrier to her head. Say hi. Oh and here's Kate:

So my lovely ex-flatmate...

...and her new flatmate have started an awesome blog all about make-up and stuff. It's great, and lovely and pretty in a way mine will probably never be as I don't understand computers. Aaaaanyway, it's got me thinking on the many ways in which I fail to live up to modern grooming standards. I mean, you shouldn't think that I am running the streets of Berlin looking like some total hog with a mustache but my eyebrows are definitely more Brooke Shields than well, anyone with really shapely, dainty brows, and my methods of "shaping" my nails often involve the highly glamourous and not at all gross "biting and chewing" approach. And when it comes to make-up my relationship with that is best described in the immortal words of my mother, "Good lord, Megan, you look like a child with finger paints". So yeah, read lovely, elegant Clare and Jade's opinions on such matters and leave me to my vague, incoherent ramblings.

Speaking of vague and incoherent,I'm going out tonight. First my lovely friends are cooking me dinner and then we're going to Kleine Reise which has reopened in its usual and amazing location. I intend to be merry but composed as have a flight to get tomorrow and if I arrive hungover (again) my mother may actually kill me. On the off chance that any of you see me tonight, heading out of the realm of the merry but composed, please, please send me home.

Heavens!

Haven't blogged in a while.I can't imagine this affecting anyone other than myself, really (though, hello eight readers! Very heartening, thank you.) but still.

Things that have been distracting me from blogging:

Awesome Casella's visit. Wowee, how much fun was had? Too much. I miss you ladee, come back to us soooooon.

Reading Nora Roberts. Again. I know, I know, it's sick and wrong. I have a BA in Literature for fuck's sake. But can I stop, no I bloody well can't. The one I finished last night finished with a cougar killing a criminal to save the woman he loved. A cougar, a big mountain cat thing. there was alot about cougars and such, since the leading "strong woman" (so the blurb tells us) is a leader in her field of big cat preservation. All while managing to be beautiful and sexy and slim and ever so slightly vulnerable (even if she won't admit this vulnerabilty, even to herself). But it's okay, she ultimately lets herself admit her vulnerabilty, and succumbs to the love and protection of some man. I mean, it's angering me so much to even vaguely outline the plots of these things (the last one I read had exactly the same plot but instead of wildlife reserves the woman was really great at refurbishing houses. Seriously.) but I cannot put them down. It's like really awful, patronising, cliched heroin.

Cleaning the flat. Not something we often do, but yesterday it became a matter of neccessity after the flatmate and I discovered that the leak coming from under the sink was in fact soy sauce.

Adjusting to the new Butter Cutting Regime that the flatmate has me under. Apparently I cut at the paper too much and that creates some kind of trouble for her. But I have been shown the Error of my Ways and am Truly Sorry.

But, wahey, it's the weekend again. So if you'll excuse me I have to go get gussied up (as my grandfather would say), or at the least amake an attempt and femininity.

Soooo, I was in London last weekend.

And spent the whole damned time missing Berlin. Well, nearly the whole time. Any time I had a sausage roll or a Rich Tea biscuit in my mouth I was pretty much the U.K.'s biggest fan, but you know what I mean. Yeah, 'tis good to be back. Berlin is very definitely home now, which is a good thing as I live here and it's always awkward feeling out of place the whole time.

And Berlin is being particularly AWESOME to me these days. First of all I have a Besuch, Sara, who has come all the way from NEW YORK CITY to see us and our city. So exciting. We are showing her all the sights. Like the inside of various bars and Das Perfekte Dinner. She is Loving It.

Secondly, I went ice-skating last night and it was freakin' cool. (No pun intended. Seriously, that would be an awful pun, and I take my puns seriously. You're talking to the woman who recently made an AMAZING pun involving knitting magazines which referenced the Smiths.) We all went and had fun times and gluehwein. Lots of gluehwein. Seriously, the state of us. Literally on the ice for about fifteen minutes before we established a gluehwein station, whereby one person would wait off the ice with a cup of wein and proffer it as each person glided past*. Like the water station at a marathon**. Good times.

* For "glided past", in my case at least, read "shuffled by in an awkward and terrified manner".

** Well, nothing like, really. I mean it wasn't water, it was wine and, exciting as it was, 50 minutes ice skating ain't no marathon. But still.

(More) Uncomfortable Confessions.

At the risk of this blog becoming little more than a weirdly candid series of posts detailing my eventual and inevitable total failure to be a proper human being there are some things that have been perturbing me of late.

I am getting more and more drawn into the world of Nora Roberts, romance novellist extraordinaire. It's not even trashy (read graphic) romance either. It's like proper "her pleasure drove her to the peak of the mountain and down over the other side into the valley of dreams as he ravished her"-type romance. But goddamnit, she spins a damned good yarn. Better, I suppose, than the weird vampire romance/porn/sci-fi/street-fighting "novel" I was so entranced with this time last year.

Last night the lovely ladies that I teach English to were joking that I needed to find a nice boyfriend and then I'd stay in Berlin. And what did I reply to these lovely women who PAY for me, as a PROFESSIONAL, to TEACH them stuff? "I like boys who are in rock and roll bands". Good one, Super Teacher.

I had a sex dream about Kerry Katona last night. I really don't think this one needs much explanation. That and I really, really don't want to talk about it.

So I watched Steel Magnolias again last night...

...which is probably something I should stop doing in front of people as I just Over Emote to the point of ridiculousness, but ANYWAY, it's amazing. It makes me want even more than normal to up sticks to the rebel states, find a veranda and get working on some mint juleps. For reasons best known to myself (though I have a sneaky suspicion it has something to do with reading Gone With The Wind at an impressionable age) I have a borderline obsessive interest in the Southern states, and its women in particular. They're just so feisty. The fact that I live in the same world as Dolly Parton genuinely enriches my life every single day.

LOOK AT THIS. Her hair is at least 10 inches high, ffs! This video makes me sad I am no longer peroxide blonde (no mean feat, I looked like a transvestite. And not in a good way).