Isn't Negligee French for Neglect?

Dahlings, how are you all?


Right that's enough about you, back to me.

Went to a Daphne4Boyz Mother's Power Lunch yesterday.
Discussion of vital issues including the horror of rugby (Swollen Parts and How to Deal With Them), what happens when you pack your 10 year old's boxer pants by mistake in husband's case for business trip (Swollen Parts and How to Deal With Them) (husband uncomplainingly goes commando) and Most Important of All:

Do we need to Raise our Game in terms of Nightwear in view of our Advancing Years?

To be honest, my heart sank.  I thought bed was one place were I could let it all go and happily crawl into my tatty pjs and washed out sweatshirts. And as Mr B is usually at work till all hours "trying to get something out" (always thought he was referring to a new draft of legislation but now wonder if I should check he has right underpants on) he never actually sees me in daylight anyway, let alone notice what night garb I am wearing.

On the other hand, only the day before I had been checking out the Marks and Spencer nightwear as I am in the market for some news pjs, having reluctantly parted company with one pair which had mysteriously developed holes after only 15 years..so this topic was of  great interest.

Instead of comfy Mummy pjs, should I get myself an elegant La Perla type night dress with matching gown? 

La Perla; "Your dinner is in the dog Mr B"

 But feel I do not have the lifestyle to go with it - when would I actually put on the gown?  These days I am either comatose or up wrangling Boys 1 and 2, there is no in between lounging around dipping strawberries in champagne ...And I can't have any drapey silk getting underfoot as I chase the boys around the house (Elf and Safety issues). I suppose Cruella de Ville managed ok, but then she had help.

Also if Mr B did come home early enough to catch sight of me decked up like this, he would probably think he was in the wrong house and go next door looking for his supper...

La Perla; "Darling be a dear and take the bins out would you?"...(hey, I am starting to get the point of this fancy sleepwear idea, just need to hire a body double and some antique furniture)

Vita e Passioni d'Emira silk-georgette and lace robe

Rosamosario £520  from net a porter

 Rosamosario Venetian Love lace-trimmed silk-crepe kimono

£695 from net a porter

       

Us Daphne4Boyz Mothers also discussed the fashion for All in Ones- I mentioned how unsettled I was to see these on offer at M&S for Grown Ups.

From M&S on-line

 Apparently lots of young girls wear these at boarding school to keep warm while doing their prep.  Best left to the young I feel - also the likelihood of my toppling over and knocking myself out when trying to extricate myself from said garment in middle of the night to have a wee is too high....do not want to be found unconscious with babygro round my ankles.... (What's that Mr B?  Wouldn't be the first time? Ha ha Mr B, ha ha).


The only good look I've seen involving a onesie recently (apart from babies who of course look adorable in them) is this:

found this on pinterest, not sure who took the pic in first place, happy to attribute if anyone knows

 Who knew that the whole issue of night clothes is so fraught?

And why are those coat thingies called negligees?  When they are so obviously the exact opposite of Letting Oneself Go?   Answers please ready for next Daphnes Mothers Power Lunch. No pressure. A full Powerpoint presentation and Excel spreadsheet of different sleepwear option price points is also required.

Sweet Jesus!

It's my birthday today and my friend Special K just dropped this round for me:

And now I have completely lost focus...

Birthday? What birthday?

Mrs Blighty Pin Up Girl

Gratuitous pic of satsumas; does not count as one of your 5 a day

Yes dahlings it's true!  I have been busy with my pin up work.

But not page 3.  Don't worry, I haven't got my satsumas out - they only come out at Christmas (as long as the central heating is on).

No, my latest obsession is Pinterest. 

It's basically sticking pics in an on-line scrapbook and the way I do it, an utterly mindless activity, so of course I love it, sooooo relaxing.

I sit "pinning" fashion pics like a demented zombie, happy as a clam, while all around me things go horribly wrong - the other night, for example, Boy 1 decided to venture upon his maiden voyage around a tin of peaches with the can opener.  Result: sudden tsunami of peach syrup due to unfortunate pressure on lid....Grandma Whacker who came into the kitchen to investigate is then stuck to the floor; strangely, the spilt juice  had the opposite effect on Boy 2 who managed to skid into the fridge door.... and as the bodies piled up, I carried on regardless, with a happy smile, pinning and writing earth shattering captions like "brown and black"*.  Vogue really need me, they so do....

Apart from an escape from the endless domestic drudgery that is my life  actually doing anything useful around the house, the Pinpinthing has introduced me to yet more fashion blogs, including Seersucker and Saddles    and Happily Grey



Seersuckers and Saddles - isn't she just the cutest?

Happily Grey  - those jeans are polka dot AND velvet, adorables dahlings!

You can check out my Pinterest here, it might help if you are having trouble sleeping!!

However, I have noticed a few unwelcome developments due to my Pinterest phase:

First, though I started well, behaving myself and writing perky little captions as to why I liked a particular outfit or notes to remind me to try certain combinations,  soon the REAL ME started creeping in and being a bit sarky - about  an all cream outfit I found myself writing, "Keep away from boys encrusted in Nutella"; to a doubled up shirt combo I appended: "2 shirts to increase the ironing."  It is only a matter of time before I start up with "knickers a good idea with micro mini" or " avoid bobble hat with stripey top unless you want to channel "Where's Wally"."

From the Where's Wally books

From popcornnews.ru; not a good outfit for jam making

Secondly,  all these images have completely scrambled my brain and any personal style I ever had is shot;  I am currently wearing 2 shirts (one gingham, one denim), 3 pearl necklaces, spotty trousers, a stripey sailor top, a denim waistcoat, a combat jacket, one brown boot, one Converse All Star and a woolly leopard hat....I am scaring not only my children but myself (when I pass a mirror) and with Guy Fawkes night coming up...

Third, I couldn't resist putting all the crazed bushbaby outfits on my Pinpinthing, so removing any remaining doubt as to my sanity.

And worst of all, I have come to the totally predictable and deeply depressing conclusion that if you are young and beautiful, with amazing hair and glowing skin and endless legs,  you will look fab in most things, whereas, if you are Mrs Blighty, almost 50, no matter what sartorial trickery you pull, you will still look 50,  tired and worn and a bit frayed round the edges.....and adding polka dots and leopard print will just make you look tired, worn etc and slightly deranged...  but what the heck, I'm doing it anyway!


So watch out for my next Pinterest caption which will probably read, " Yeah, whatever, you're beautiful and blonde, with great skin, you look fab in dirty denim with tattered jeans and a baseball hat,  I would just look like a homeless person.."   At which point I will probably be barred from Pinterest on the grounds that bitter and twisted has no place there...

See what I mean? Young and beautiful...
From The Sartorialist

*actually, in one caption  I went with "black with brown" which of course is completely different.

In Which I am Almost Elizabeth Hurley

Dahlings, me and Miss Elizabeth Hurley have long led parallel lives....we are practically indistinguishable...(climbs back onto chair after mad fit of laughing at own joke as usual...)

As I may have mentioned in passing  a propos of nothing at all to a few people Everybody I Know (plus a terrified stranger in the frozen foods section of Tesco), Boy 1 went to the same posho pre-prep school in London attended by Miss Hurley's son....in fact, I did say hello to her once: she was waiting to put money in the parking meter and I was trying to get Boy 2 to relinquish his death grip on said parking meter after I made the mistake of letting him feed in the coins...as I wrestled with the octopus like Boy 2 who clung on like a demented limpet while turning puce, I feel me and Miss Hurley really bonded... (note to self: need to calm down on the marine imagery/Jacques Cousteau dvds).


Here's Boy 1 back in the day:

And here is further visual evidence that we were batting way out of our league by signing up for that school: *

From CBBC News website

From Famecrawler website - yes really

Later my life and that of Miss Hurley again interconnected: the very week news of Miss Hurley's relationship to Shane Warne became public, highly compromising photos of me surfaced on the internet** and I was forced to deny rumours of an involvement with cricketer Wayne Shorn.

 And now we have another convergence.  You may recall Miss Hurley's elaborate wedding complete with Indian costume and dancing.

From Hello magazine

Well, only the other night I attended Greggs Grammar's very own Bollywood evening.

Here's my outfit.

Mr Blighty came too and I knew we were in for a good night when he mentioned he was going to leave his vest off as he might get too hot.  Phwoarrrr Mr Blighty, you animal you!

Mr Blighty followed the dance demonstration by Mr Jay Kumar very carefully - he particularly liked the move known as "change the light bulb" (though he did express concerns about whether Mr Kumar was properly certified as an electrician).  Tremendous fun! Here's a clip Mr Kumar in action.

Better go now dahlings, I'm expecting a call from Estee Lauder's people...

T, thanks for the bindi, sets off my eyes a treat

 *But worth every penny in terms of the anecdotes I have wrung out of it...

** ok, I admit I put the photos on the internet myself and on my own blog, but it's not easy being a D list sleb you know..



Unexpected Flare Up

What's wrong with this picture?

Miss Victoria Beckham, photo from the Daily Mail on-line

And this?

From Wendys' LookBook

And this? EEEEEK!!!!


Miss Katie Holmes, from Broke and Chic blog

Love this look, from Stardust and Sequins

Dahlings, I am staring in the face of a Total Fashion Trauma: it appears that flares are back.

In the Great Decluttering of 2011, out went most of my flares - I mean, they were soooo 2002!

If you need me, I'll be sulking in the corner, or possibly scouring the charity shops for my old trousers...

If all else fails, I shall embark on an anti-fashion protest and wear these....






From Stardust and Sequins

Why I should never help with homework

Dahlings, long time no blog!

So Boy 1 has started Really Big School, no more Daphnes4Boyz, country club with lessons. Now he is at the local state* grammar school for boys, let's call it Greggs Grammar.



After a carefree summer my big boy put away his shorts and T-shirts and went back to the daily grind; also Boy 1 went  to his new school

 Keen that Boy 1 makes a good impression, I am helping with homework as required.

Today he had to design some sort of heraldic shield for Religious Instruction.

He got a bit stuck on thinking up a motto.

"MUUUUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAMMMMM!" he requested softly, in his usual dulcet tones, "THINK OF A MOTTO. NOW. COME ON!"

I came up with a few suggestions:
Just Do It.
Work, Rest and Play.
Go to work on an egg.
Mind the gap.

No good.

I studied the design carefully. I concluded the key elements were:
fear of heights;
keen on footie and ping pong.

"I've got it", I announced triumphantly:

"Keep Your Feet On the Ground and Your Balls in the Air."

Really I'm wasted here.



In the end Boy 1 opted for the more succint "Believe in my sport." He looked at me with pity: "When you say something you think is funny, you laugh, and then you keep on laughing, long after it isn't funny..." Harsh but fair.

* This means it's FREE. No more school fees. It takes extreme willpower to refrain from throwing myself at the staff, sobbing "I can't believe all this is free, thank you, thank you...."

Fifty Socks of Grey by E L Blighty

"Holy Crap!" gasped Anastasia, "That's just enormous....huge...!!!"
"And all for you Anastasia, " growled Christian Blighty, charismatic, damaged and dangerous - the sort of Top Executive parliamentary draftsman that knew his way round semi-colons...a guy who put syncopation in his punctuation.

Anastasia's Inner Goddess did an exotic pole dance, before putting her back out and having to be helped to her seat.

Yes, it was truly the biggest pile of unsorted socks Anastasia had ever seen.

"And now", said Christian Blighty, "I am going to take you to the White Room of  Pain..."
"Oh no, not the utility room," groaned AnagoshthisnameislongcanIjustcallherNasty?, her Inner Goddess breaking wind gently and lighting up a fag.

"Yes," was Christian's masterful reply.  "And there you will do something you have never done before..  you will sort the socks into pairs and put them away in your drawers... yes, there you have it, it's my tremendous Sox Appeal.."

Yep, dahlings, almost everyone I know has read or is reading Those Books*.  Except me.  I am resisting, out of sheer contrariness...I just enjoy reading reviews of them and listening to other mothers discussing them:

"I was up to 3am reading it."
"Some of those things are just not physically possible."
"I told my husband I was off to bed to read it - when he joined me ever hopeful, I was fast asleep with my reading glasses on."
"Mrs Blighty, sorry but you can't stand here with us, you have to go stand over there with the other people who have not read it; yes, Mr Pinkerton, the retired headmaster, oh, wait a minute, he's read it now too.."

 A friend even updated her Facebook page with"It's all coming to an end with Mr Grey."

And when I looked at Grain de Musc the perfume blog of Denyse Beaulieu, I found that she is currently working on the French translation of 50 Shades ....it's everywhere I turn!

I suspect my refusal to join the Greyfest is largely motivated by jealousy - I wish I had penned a bestseller like this.  Although any mommy porn I author is going to be less erotic and more idiotic. ...

"I want you now, here, in the escalator," demanded Christian urgently.
"Are you sure? "
"Yes, there is just something about escalators."
"No, I mean, don't you mean "elevator" not "escalator"?" queried Anaethesia, breathlessly; "We don't want to get anything caught in the moving parts and the other shoppers might not like it.."
"You damn bourgeois fool you," blazed Christian, as they arrived at Home Furnishings.



* 50 Socks Of Grey
Paddington Bear At Large
Grey Underpants In My Sink