Fancy-Schmancy

"Is this the one you ordered, sir? Are you sure? Isn't it pretty! Here's the front label... aaaand the back label! Do you want to feel the print? It's embossed! And there's gold leaf on it!!!"

Sadly our waiter wasn't dressed quite this fruitily.

I got taken out for dinner yesterday, mm-hmmmm very nice; I actually wore a dress!!! Which is fantastically rare for me in winter - if there's one thing I hate more than draughty skirts it's TIGHTS. Nasty laddery chilly clingy things that they are. And every time we eat out (not so often, I hasten to add) I remember why I am sort of a liability in semi-swanky places:
When being fawned upon by the wine waiter I invariably find myself trying hard not to snort with laughter as I think of QVC presenters demonstrating Diamonique jewellery - much the same spokesmodel wrist action is used, whether what they're flourishing is a bottle of Chablis or a tennis bracelet (no, I have no idea what one is either) - it's the mime equivalent of "Nice, isn't it? Ooh, so pretty. Look at it from this angle. Now this one. Looooovely." - all of this while you're pretending to taste the wine, which frankly would have to be downright OFF for you to risk making the spokesmodel/sommelier cry at this point by saying No (unless you're one of those scary city-boy alpha-types who automatically rejects the wine just to show what an oenophile you are, and you betcha that's how you refer to yourself too, as well as bon viveur, you great ponce).
... Er, that was it. I had scallops with black pudding, and braised ox cheek with mash. Very nice too. And the wine was actually very good.

Adventures In Drunk Internet Shopping

Hurrah! Paid again. And after doing the sensible stuff (big Ocado shop, paying bills, dreaming of an iPhone), I went slightly crazy on (shhhhhh) Amazon - well, I may work in a bookshop, but I feel no guilt in buying CDs, DVDs and books that are out of print on line, especially when they are cheaper than the postage required to get them to me. I consider myself an object lesson in How Not To Buy Stuff On The Internet, however, and here are several cautionary facts you should consider if, like many, you love and admire me so much you wish to emulate my every action (pause for snigger).

1) Internet shopping while drunk is a foolish, foolish thing.
2) If you do not know how big your oven is, how can you be sure that the nonstick roasting tin with removable rack will fit? Eh???
3) Absolutely nothing is the colour it appears on screen. Not the nail varnish, not the t-shirt. What appears a gorgeous deep fuchsia will inevitably turn out to be a deeply unflattering and nylon-y looking salmon. I speak the truth here.
4) Nobody needs more than 15 plain black long-sleeved tops.
5) If it doesn't say "brand new, unopened" it will smell. Or have a suspicious-looking stain.

The second week of every pay month is marked by lots and lots of tiny packages turning up for me at work, mostly CDs, often DVDs, with varying degrees of delight or shame. I can always tell how drunk I was when I placed the order (in my defence: at home, usually late Friday after big nice dinner and a bottle of wine, on Mr Fishwife's laptop, Me: "C'nIvergo nyour laptop?" Him: "DO NOT START SPENDING MONEY ON CRAP." Me: "Juss wanna look at amazon. Oh! Yay! I bought you a looooovely t-shirt!! What chest size are you again? Doesnmatter, I've already paid..." usw) by how embarrassing the item is when it turns up. Xanadu, anyone? The Best Of Grandmaster Flash And The Sugarhill Gang?

HOWEVER neither the Internet nor the demon drink had anything to do with my new-found love for Mad Men, although I have just received the DVD of season 1 and am feverishly planning a marathon of Old Fashioneds, waspie corsets and smoking everywhere. To which end I give you my new giant ladycrush and secret role model, the flawless, fabulous, plus-sized Joan.Earth has not anything to show more fair. Nor more curvy. Sadly her chief attractions are hidden behind the accordion, but what the hell. I promise I will never get so carried away by the combined temptations of Fabuloso Spanish Brandy and payday that I buy an accordion.

PS AND she was singing "C'est Magnifique".

Nuptials, saucy Restoration poetry, and the return of Gertie Blood.

So, sunny summer weddings. Are they great or what? Particularly when the bride (let us call her Steak, for she is a vegetarian) concludes her touching speech of love to her new husband with the words ".. and I can't wait to start my life with you and start having lots of pasty little ginger freaks." The groom (let us call him Kidney), a more or less dead ringer for Frankie Boyle (or either of the Proclaimers), did a "fair comment" kind of shrug. Could any love be greater? Not a dry eye in the Gladstone Library of the Liberal Club. My only quibble was with the three flights of giant stairs one had to navigate in either direction to have a cigarette - surely if I provided proof I voted Lib Dem I'd be allowed to light up under the vast oil painting of Winston "Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em" Churchill? Sadly (and, in fact, legally) no. Not even in the vast Edwardian grandeur of the Smoking Room.

How stately and gorgeous is that? Less so when you've been up and down it 100000 times because the lift is full of band equipment...

Highlights of the day (for me) included some random tourists approaching the bride on the lawn outside and asking if she'd take a picture, er, of them. "I'm a little busy right now", she said, as if the long sparkly white dress hadn't given it away. And the bride's sister-in-law saying "Yes, the hen weekend in Newcastle was great, except that Sir Bobby Davro had just died so all the football fans were in mourning"*.

My part in this excellent day was the reading of "The Good Morrow" by John Donne. Complicated not at all by my fear that I would blush in an unseemly way on reading the line "Suck'd we on country pleasures childishly?" - yes, I know, I know, we're all grownups, but frankly John Donne meant it to be a tad racy (as any student of Shakespeare kno, reference to "country pleasures" and "country matters" are generally intended to be a euphemism). Luckily I was so enthralled by the sheer loveliness of my own voice in the scholarly setting of the Gladstone Library that I failed to even clear my throat. Although I took the precaution of looking at Steak throughout (smiling radiantly yet tearfully like a proper bride), rather than Kidney, who would have gurned at me.

HOWEVER. All weddings have that moment where you bump into someone and realise you knew them years ago; in my case, while sneaking into an empty sideroom (trying to find a balcony rather than brave the stairs for the billionth time), who should I see gazing down at me from the wall but the lovely Lady Colin Campbell (aka Gertie Blood). She's been gracing my sidebar (as have Steak & Kidney) for over a year now, and I've got used to dropping into the National Gallery to say hello every now and then - but there she was.

Surely that has to be an excellent omen of something.

* Note for non-football fans - Sir Bobby Robson = recently deceased giant of British football, latterly much-loved manager of Newcastle United. Bobby Davro = mediocre TV impressionist. Non-deceased, non-giant, non-much-loved.

"I was a holiday vampire" confesses local bookseller

Hurrah for the hols, as the Famous Five were prone to saying with irritating regularity. I have 22 books, factor 50 sunblock and a selection of garments that more or less approximate a burkha. All I ask is a profoundly shaded seating area with an ashtray the size of a bucket and a relentless stream of waiters bearing ice-cold Chang beer. Yes, on Saturday Mr Fishwife and I will be struggling to Heathrow with our gigantic and overweight suitcases (mine = books, his = diving gear). In our separate and characteristic ways we have been preparing for this departure for weeks. I panic-buy local currency, usually at a vastly inferior rate of exchange to the one I'd have got at the Bangkok airport ATM, and fill my suitcase with books so I'm not tempted to read them before the holiday. Mr F spends every night poring over the long-range weather forecasts, establishes that there will be heavy thundershowers DIRECTLY OVER OUR HOTEL for the entire duration of the holiday, and sulks. And this is before he decides that we are heading into an area of Political Unrest and will be unable to get home due to coup-related airport closures (suits me fine). Invariably I forget my nuclear-blast-proof sunblock and have to buy it locally (you'd have thought with my leprous pallor I'd be forewarned, but this has in fact happened twice).

HOWEVER. All of the above being equal, I am looking forward to two full weeks of blissfully uninterrupted reading. Eating things with indecent amounts of chilli in/on them. Not feeling guilty about drinking cocktails midweek. Getting up early with a smile on my face because I can devote my whole day to deciding what to read and where to have a huge plate of Pad Thai for lunch. My only obligation being to vacate the room for a polite length of time while somebody else makes the bed. Wandering about barefoot or in flip-flops. WARMTH. Seeing the joy of Mr Fishwife as he slowly turns the colour of Ikea Billy shelving (beech veneer option).

Below please find the song that will be on a permanent loop in my head. I apologise for the unnecessary nature of George Michael's white Speedo. I hope you're all thoroughly jealous. I hope our hotel isn't full of people like the ones in the video...

I should just point out the fact that it says "Pat Sharp's House of Fun" in the top right-hand corner. How far back does that take you - and would you rather not have gone there...?

An odd and apparently separate part of the brain

Imagine you're a police officer, and you're attempting to establish whether there have been witnesses to a crime. We've all seen Identikit pictures of suspects on the news, and they look nothing like a real person. Often they look like a Muppet. And when the suspect is black or Asian, often the different parts of their Identikit face are slightly different colours, adding insult to injury. However - apparently there has been extensive research into how people recognise a face in a picture, and the quickest and easiest way to jog their memory is to show them a picture of somebody famous who resembles the suspect, and ask them if they saw a man who looked like, for instance, Tommy Lee Jones (a scary prospect in itself). Without going into too much scientific detail, it's mainly because our memory of a face is as a whole, and breaking it down feature by feature is far harder to do. Fascinating, no? And something I've been doing as far back as I can remember. Whenever someone tells me about a new boy/girlfriend my first question is always "Who would play them in a film?" - obviously you have to make allowances for the fact that leurve can vastly improve the looks of a potential suitor but if they say "Ooh maybe Hugh Jackman...?" I can assume it's some man who is tall, smiley, and quite good-looking (and possibly Australian). One of the best drunken dinner-party conversations I've ever had was when we were all deciding who would play us in the films that would inevitably be made of our lives - Philip Seymour Hoffman loomed large (not playing me, obviously, but as my friend Marky Mark), although my friend Steak and I nearly came to blows over who got Laura Linney. I fobbed her off with Mena Suvari (well, Steak does look about 15). Everyone tried to make Mr Fishwife feel better about his comprehensively (and prematurely) grey hair by saying "Well, obviously George Clooney". And all at once I was reminded, depressingly, of the colleague I once had (who, himself, looked like Hugh Grant in About A Boy) who considered the idea for a while and then finally decided I looked most like Axl Rose.

No, seriously, which one would you prefer if you were me????