almost witty

Draw up any list of alleged Hollywood heart-throbs, and I honestly can’t see why anyone would fancy most of them. Tom Cruise? Too chiselled. Brad Pitt? Too blonde. Richard Gere? HE’S GOT GREY HAIR AND NO CHARM!

However, one exception is George Clooney. Not only does he seem to be a genuinely charming nice gentlemen (but then I’ve never met him - and maybe he just has an exceptionally good PR agency working for him) willing to stick up for the “common man”, but he looks genuinely good AND relaxed in a suit. Especially with an open-collared shirt.

When I don a suit, however, I tend to feel like I look like a squashed gorilla into a suit. It doesn’t help, of course, that I’ve made some suit-buying choices over the years which I thought were a good idea, but exposed to the raw summer sunshine was a terrible idea. My old-time-school friends have now taken to calling me Mr. Del Monte and asking whether my summer beige linen jacket will ever see the light of day again.

However, I seem to have turned a corner. I was on the hunt for a good interview shirt the other day, and actually decided to get my neck measured instead of hazarding a guess. The resulting shirt gave me the right open-collar look that, to my mind, aped George Clooney. This I exclaimed to Miss R who, to her credit, did not immediately disavail me of the notion.

Unfortunately, I now have a second round. Which means I need to find another shirt - or at least, catch lightning in the same bottle twice. This, I fear, might be easier.

(and yes, an entire blog post about buying a shirt. I apologise.)

and this is what Miss R and I have ended up doing. Honest.

(continue reading…)

Sorry I’ve been away for so long but I’ve pretty much spent the last six weeks with the good Miss R travelling the length and breadth of the UK - from Edinburgh to Somerset - to minimise our carbon emissions by not flying. Honest.

And now I’m back and trying to figure out what to blog about. It’s all such a distant memory…  but in the meantime, if you want an insight into what *really* scares me, look at this photograph…

On our travels across the length and breadth of the British Isles this summer, I have noticed one or two strange things.

To whit:

1. As part of the official tourist map of Weston-super-Mare, there is a prominent advert for a funeral directors. You know, just in case you were planning to die there.

2. The Bram Stoker Dracula Experience will take visitors on a “frightful journey” through Castle Dracula. Handy, therefore, that it also has baby changing facilities - just in case you’d choose to take your delicate newly-born children on a frightful journey…

"Middleaged" ?!

Originally uploaded by applegrass.

Whilst on holiday down in Somerset (typical, the sun shines brightly for four weeks in North Wales - as soon as we head out on a weekend away in England, the sun disappears!) we popped into the helpful tourist information office to enquire about accomodation.

The B&B owner enquired to the helpful young woman behind the counter about our age - to which the woman bashfully said that we were middle-aged.

MIDDLE-AGED ?!!! We’re barely into our 30s!

This has now of course prompted a 3/8 life-crisis and we are (seriously) spending the weekend going on helicopter rides and jet-ski-ing.

Honest. Pics to come. In theory. Depending on if we recover.