Box, Frocks and Rocks

Box

I have a new crush and I’ll concede it’s an odd one, even for me. In case you needed another reason to watch Channel 4’s Come Dine With Me (honestly the best piece of social-observation telly you will ever witness between the hours of Jeremy Kyle and 6pm) it’s narrator Dave Lamb is simply superb. Witty, unapologetically mocking of the show’s hapless contestants and unafraid to whip out a shamelessly bad pun when necessary; the man deserves a Knighthood for services to sarcasm alone. Still not convinced? I just googled him and his head shot proves him to be a slightly younger, sexier version of Anthony Hopkins. The baking woman’s crumpet methinks? 

Frocks

Second-hand. Retro-chic. Vintage.  Common terms in any fashion-savvy student’s sartorial encyclopaedia. But does anyone else get the sneaking suspicion that rather than being gloriously post-modern, we’re actually stuck in a style time warp? Consider the scenario: You are out for drinks with friends. Friend A is wearing a prim 1950’s patterned frock eerily (very a la mode yet eerily reminiscent of The Stepford Wives). Friend B is all Edie Sedgwick in boots and mini-mini-dress, while Friend C is resplendent in fur and winkle-pickers.
Once upon a time these individual looks would have been, well, just that, individual. But throw all three together in one clique of friends and it’s as if Fallowfield’s museum of costume is doing a promo event. Maybe we’ve exhausted so many ridiculous trends that we have no choice but to recycle old ones. Maybe I’m over-analysing this. Or just maybe I should get me some new friends and some Ugg boots like any self-respecting 21-year-old. 

Rocks

Handing in your dissertation! As I clear away the empty teacups, balled up papers and last rogue Penguin bar wrappers from my desk, waves of immense relief wash over me.  
It’s been typed, it’s been bound, it’s been dumped at the undergraduate office. Never again will I be haunted by the pernicious guilt specifically symptomatic of not being hunched over one’s laptop at all hours, never again will I check my word count only to realise that I’ve only written seventeen words since I last checked, never again will I awake in the middle of the night haunted by footnotes and bibliographies and never again will I have to wrack my brains for a synonym for “similarly” until my ears bleed.