Tuesday Twins Again

I've been thinking about how some celebrities just aren't aging well at all. Here we have Keith Richards (on the right) whose resemblance to a Halloween ghoul is uncanny.

And then there's poor, sad Melanie Griffiths, who has managed to mangle her face in an effort to look younger.

Another one who I think is aging badly is Alec Baldwin (who should also win Bad Dad of the Year award). He used to be HOT. What happened?

And what about Tom Cruise? I loved him in Risky Business, even Top Gun. But have you seen his latest haircut? Not a good look. His fellow Scientologist, John Travolta, has blown up like dirigible.

I suppose it's not pleasant to have to grow older in front of the world. Still, they have a pretty good life, don't they, if their only worries are looking good in front of a camera.

And here's me, almost 48, mistaken for 32 by a drunken flirt at the weekend and feeling really good about it. Eat your heart out, celebrities.

I Love to Party

And this past weekend was full of them. First, there was my annual Halloween party on Friday. It's become a tradition among a group of friends that I, as the American, host the party.

When my kids were little, I felt really bad that they wouldn't be able to participate in trick-or-treating, since the British aren't too keen on it. At first I took them to a Halloween party put on by an American ex-pat group. But it felt artificial to me. Then Frenemy and I decided to do our own. We rented a hall, a friend brought his disco equipment, we did all the food, and I organised games for the kids. The next year I organised it on my own. Big Mistake. It was a huge responsibility, and I didn't enjoy myself. The year after that I decided to host it at my house, scaled it down a bit, tried to turn the top floor of my house into a haunted attic, was exhausted. But I'd set the standard so had to keep doing it. The year after that, Frenemy came into the kitchen during the party bearing 2 shriveled, brown balls. I asked if they were her husband's. They weren't. Frenemy and another friend had hidden baked potatoes the year before in my dining room and never bothered to tell me. The potatoes had been lurking for a year in hidden shelves in my dining table I never knew existed. Now they knew exactly what kind of housekeeper I am. I laughed at the time because what else could I do?

I didn't host the Halloween party last year because we were in London househunting the week before, so it fell to another friend in the group. And it wasn't the same. This year by popular request it was back at my house. As it will be next year. I'm going to introduce a theme, Saints and Sinners, and a new game, Find the Potatoes. I better go hide them now.

Saturday night was a different party altogether. The disco equipment friend is very good at marking occasions, particularly his own birthday. For his 40th, he rented a huge hall, hired a band and caterers, invited loads of people, some of whom chipped in to buy him a new set of golf clubs. And his brother thought it would be a good idea to hire a lap dancer. The friend's parents and his wife were there, as were many other women. The lap dancer stripped down to a G-string, stripped our friend down to his underwear, rubbed oil all over his chest while rubbing her breasts on him, put a collar and lead around his neck, forced him down on all fours and paraded him around the room. That was two years ago and we still talk about it.

By contrast this birthday celebration was much more tame. It was a masquerade theme and the men were encouraged to wear masks with very long noses (I think you get the gist). This was the party I was supposed to lose 8 pounds for. Instead, I put on three. One guest, the Party Flirt, told my husband he thought I was 32. Must be the extra weight filling out the wrinkles. Still, I felt good, drank loads of champagne and shots of a Baileys/Tia Maria/Vodka/Brandy concoction and suffered greatly yesterday. But no lap dancers, Thank God!

I was going to do a Monday Moaning, but at this particular point in time there's nothing to moan about other than the additional three pounds I put on. And that's not really worth moaning about. VI has recruited me to join her dieting program. I'll let you know how I get on.

Very Old and Very Ugly

I wonder if any of you have met Xenophobia? She is very, very old, probably as old as humankind itself. And she is very, very ugly. She has many faces and many followers. Whole political parties and religions have been created in homage to her.

Sometimes she is blatantly obvious, such as in concentration camps created by the ever-organised Germans to annihilate whole sectors of the population. Sometimes less so, as in the Japanese detainment camps created by Americans during WWII to contain people whose race they feared.

And fear is what feeds Xenophobia. Hatred too, but that's really just a by-product of fear. When people want to deport all foreigners because they believe they are the root cause of all that's wrong with society, Xenophobia is there, laughing her hideous laugh. Xenophobia travels the world spreading her gospel, and many embrace it. Even some so-called liberal thinkers who would never think to infringe on the rights of others. They might be the most insidious of Xenophobia's followers because they lie and deny their true feelings, but those feelings come out in the least expected places.

What has compelled me to write about Xenophobia is a response (actually several) written on Snuffleupagus's blog by a fellow who calls himself british national party member. He is a great follower of Xenophobia, but at least he is honest about it. Unlike, say, Turkey, which denies to this day the genocidal killing of Armenians and threatens to withdraw its military support when urged to admit it by Americans.

Ah, yes, America -- home of the brave, land of the free. Xenophobia doesn't exist there, or does she? Was she not there when Irish and Italian immigrants were badly treated? Or in those Japanese detainment camps? Or when Native Americans were forced off their ancestral lands? Or at just about every point in its past and present?

The British look down their noses at the Americans for they can see clearly that Xenophobia is alive and well in America. But they don't see that she's in their own country too. There are too many Eastern Europeans coming over and partaking of our benefits system and robbing our people of jobs, they say. Send them back. Close the borders. Keep out all the pestilence and disease and crime brought to our pristine shores by these foreigners. As if that would really be a solution. Politicians use Xenophobia's wiles to gain votes from her followers, but their victory is society's loss.

Xenophobia robs us all of tolerance, understanding, growth. Yet somehow humankind continues in all its variations. Xenophobia has not won yet, and hopefully never will.

A Fairy Tale Begun in New York

I've been thinking about what to blog about. Should I blog about my political leanings? What's been written on another blog that I found incredibly offensive? My friend's phone call from the Labour Party that was incredibly intrusive?

Nah!

I'll copy Kaycie and write about how I met my husband. Snuffleupagus has been itching to know so here's the story:

Once upon a time there was a 30-year-old woman working as a Sunday magazine editor for a suburban New York newspaper. This woman had worked very hard to get where she was, but life was empty for her. She was married to another journalist who worked at the same newspaper. She competed with him. He competed with her. They were very sad people who didn't have a real life outside work. He had threatened to leave her the year before because of a look she gave him on a really stressful day, but he refused to go to marriage counselling.

Then one day the man went to a seminar in Virginia, and a photographer at the newspaper started to flirt with the woman. She thought he was cute and was very flattered that men still found her attractive. She started to daydream about the photographer. He started to hang around her office a lot. And phone her at home. After two weeks she realized that she wanted out of her marriage. She managed to get the courage to tell the man, but faltered and suggested he come along for counselling. At their first and only session, the man said the woman had lots of problems she needed to sort out and he thought they should split up and he'd made a list dividing their property.

The woman was speechless. This was not what she wanted to hear. She wanted to hear that he loved her and wanted to work things out. She cried all the way home. The next day they divided their possessions, which weren't many, and found separate homes.

The woman lost lots of weight. She lost her job as a magazine editor and had to work nights on the copy desk. And she lost the photographer, who turned out not to be cute at all, but actually a real bastard. She went through many lonely, scary months without any sex at all and would spend weekends not speaking to a soul save her two cats who shared her bed. Eventually, she was put on the city desk, but the man had started seeing a woman from Fresno, California, who sat only 8 feet away from her. They would drop notes to each other to meet in the smoking lounge. The woman saw this several times a day because when she looked up from her computer, there they would be. She was promoted to bureau editor and moved to another office. But life outside work was still very lonely. The woman had worked so hard for so long she didn't know how to have a social life that didn't include late nights in bars with other journalists.

The woman went to see an astrologer because she had just about given up hope. The astrologer told her to calm down and be hopeful because good things were just around the corner. The woman would meet someone, probably from another country. Foreign travel would always be good for the woman. And she would have children, but not before 1994. The woman went home and felt better, though the next month she found out the photographer or the man had given her chlamydia. No more sex for me, the woman decided. At least not until I meet The One.

A few months passed and a good friend came to visit the woman. The woman decided to take a day off work and see the sights of New York with her friend. They went to the Statue of Liberty, back in the days when you could. They walked around Wall Street. They visited South Street Seaport and found an Irish bar where the bartender gave them free beers. Let's stay here a while, they decided. The woman talked for a while to a pompous trader who bored her. Then she turned around. A tall man with dark hair and glasses was staring right at her! She quickly turned back around. Then she couldn't resist another peep. He was still looking at her! He walked up to the bar next to her friend and started talking to her. The woman heard his voice. A British accent! How very sexy! The woman started talking to him too. He walked around to be closer to the woman. The woman's friend talked to the man's friends. Everyone talked and talked for hours, then the woman said she and her friend had to go get something to eat. I'll go with you, said the man with the British accent. And a good thing he did because the woman didn't have a clue how to get to the Stage Deli, which is where they ended up.

At the Stage Deli, the man paid for the meals. Then the three of them walked back to his hotel. He hailed a cab for the woman and her friend to take them to the train station and gave them money for the cab. Then he gave the woman his business card and a quick peck on the cheek. All the way back on the train the woman couldn't stop talking about the man with the British accent. Her friend told her not to expect him to call again.

One week later, about 8 p.m. on a Saturday, the woman took a break from doing her laundry. The phone rang. It was the man with the British accent. They talked and talked and talked. They agreed to start writing letters to each other. Then the man suggested the woman should come visit him. It was arranged for August, two months after they met. The woman was very nervous about the trip but her mother said if something nice happened then it would be serendipity. The man with the British accent drove her all over the country. The sun seemed to shine every day for 10 days. The woman fell head over heels in love with the man and he with her. In Windsor they passed a shop called Serendipity. It was meant to be, they decided.

They next saw each other in November when the man with the British accent flew the woman out to see him in Chicago and Nashville. Then they saw each other at New Year, when they got engaged. Then they saw each other in March when the man with the British accent met the woman's family. Then they saw each other in April, when he came over to pack up the woman's belongings to move her and the cats to England.

They got married in August, then went on their honeymoon to India the following April, where the woman got food poisoning very badly and lost loads of weight (again for she had gained back some pounds). The woman desperately wanted to get pregnant and after six months finally did so -- in January 1994. So the astrologer had been right about many things.

And they have lived ever after, sometimes even happily.

Tuesday Twins Again

I knew X Factor contestant Rhydian Roberts reminded me of someone. That's right -- it's Gunther from Friends.

On a more serious note -- or not -- laurie has memed (spelling?) me to write about how and why I created a blog. According to laurie, this is an ancient meme she has called the "What color is my sky?" meme. I tell you a little bit about myself, which I do anyway, how I came to blog, and why I blog.

My sky is sometimes blue, sometimes gray (and you'll notice the spelling changes from Anglo to American a lot), depending on my mood.

I didn't exactly know what a blog was for a long time. I'd sort of read about them, but having only started this one in March of this year, I'd say I'm pretty late on the band wagon. I started this one after reading about wifeinthenorth. I was messing around on the computer one day and found blogspot. I started to read blogs randomly. Have you ever done that? It really opens your eyes to the world. I found blogs in Arabic, Polish, Spanish, Japanese. I found porn -- lots of it -- which I hasten to add I'm not interested in. I found a journal of a homocidal lesbian (I think that one is fiction). I found photos taken by a woman who went to my university. Cat videos. You name it, I found it.

I'd missed writing since I'd given up my journalism career 15 years ago. I also felt a need to write because I'd been going through a tough time in my marriage and life. I wasn't looking for an audience, just an outlet. That's why I have such an unwieldy ID. I didn't really think it through. I didn't imagine myself commenting on other blogs or others visiting mine. Along the way I've written about my depression, my boring life, my trip to Barcelona with the family in April and then to London with my husband. I wrote a tribute to David Halberstam after he died. I wrote about Madeleine McCann (before a lot of others, I might add). I also wrote some about hubby, daughter, son, the rest of my wacky family (though not all), my 30th high school reunion, last summer's crisis with my mother, getting a puppy. I didn't tell my husband about this blog, and still haven't. But I'm getting there. I wanted to feel free to write whatever I want to write. Being anonymous helped, I think.

Along the way, something unexpected happened. I made friends, or blums as enidd calls them, to the point where I miss you guys if I don't check in every day (which seems a bit compulsive and probably is). I've revealed a lot of myself here that I don't normally do in real life. And yet most of you don't know my real name or where exactly I live. Because I write about my family, I feel it's unfair to reveal myself or them to all and sundry. I have emailed some of you so you know I'm a real person with a real name. Laurie and I have even worked with the same guy, though not at the same time.

All this blogging has made me realise that we are living in the Age of Communication. Technology has enabled us to communicate instantly at any time of day. Judging from the number of mobile (cell) phones and blogs out there, I'd say there is a great need to communicate. Yet I don't think we humans are any better at communicating. The frequency has increased but not the quality ("I'm on the train.") Look at all the 24-hour news programs on TV -- not all quality journalism there.

Blogging, for me, has become another way of connecting with others in this world, of breaking out of my solitary cocoon that I created, of finding and giving support. I don't write about everything that goes on in my life. Not enough time or interest. And I don't have the following that many blogs do, but that's OK. I'm not out to write the most popular blog. I just want to reach out to fellow human beings and make a connection.

And I think I've done that.

Now who should I pass this meme onto? How about Debio, Kelly, and Pixie?

Holding Back the Years

This is more of a rant than a moan. The other day I was in my local Tesco Universe store perusing the Potions to Make You Look Younger aisle. I wanted an exfoliating scrub for my face (did the word exfoliate exist before 2001). Olay make two different kinds, one that promises to "illuminate" your skin and one that fights the seven signs of aging (without specifying what those are).

I wondered what the difference between the two scrubs was, other than £2, so I checked out the ingredients on the back. And found there was absolutely NO difference. So I bought the cheaper one, of course, seven signs be damned.

Then I wanted some shaving gel. Now, King of Shaves makes a very nice gel for men that I get for my husband so I thought I'd check out the women's gel. But first I checked out the ingredients. Apart from the extra £2 (what is it with £2?), guess what? THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE.

Some people somewhere are getting paid a lot of money to con us women. Dare I say they might even be women? Take the former saint, Anita Roddick, whose untimely death revealed what a charlatan she and her company, Body Shop, were.

But why are we women so willing to be duped? I think it's because aging has become a sin. If you look your age, dress your age, act your age, something is wrong with you because we should all be seeking the proverbial fountain of youth. We should be spending loads of money on trying to keep our youthful looks. The more adventurous will spend loads of money on cosmetic surgery (hello, Joan Rivers and Sharon Osbourne). We should feel bad because 30 years ago we enjoyed our time in the sun a little too much and now have the wrinkles and brown spots to remind us. Or we smoked or drank or stayed out late. The cosmetics industry is trying to make us feel ashamed for having had a life.

I feel I have to try to maintain some sort of youthful appearance because I'm married to Dorian Grey. Apart from a few more grey hairs, my husband has not changed in the 16 years I've known him. He weighs the same, perhaps even a little less. If he overindulges one night, he doesn't wake up the next morning looking like a bloated fish. He doesn't have mysterious lumps and bumps that crop up overnight on his skin. I found one stretchmark on his back. He is 21 months shy of 50 and could easily pass (and does) for a 35-year-old (that seems so young now). And he doesn't use moisturizer or exfoliator or sun screen. Bastard!

Well, I've had my Monday Moan. Now you'll have to excuse me while I dash off. I've run out of moisturizer, and there could be a crisis.

Ramones-Do You Wanna Dance-R'n'R High School movie