Critics of Christina - shut it!

I have posted about Christina Hendricks before and since then the world has become even more obsessed with the buxom beauty of Mad Men. In 2010 Esquire polled female readers who voted her sexiest women of the year (I whole heartedly agree) and UK Equalities Minister Lynn Featherstone highlighted her as a positive role model for young women. "There is such a sensation when there is a curvy role model. It shouldn't be so unusual." I think she is down right gorgeous, glamorous and sexy as hell, and when I see her rocking a wiggle dress or a designer gown I wonder at the wisdom that maintains that clothes look better on skeletons...Anyway enough of that old chestnut and on to the main reason for this post.

Christina at the 2010 Emmys

Christina Sans Make Up

Recently, Christina was spotted in a state of less than perfection, which has gotten the old blogger bitches typing double fast, to ridicule her, call her fat, frumpy, plain etc. The glee with which they have denounced her beauty and derided her is obscene, and it would be easy to wonder what these arch critics themselves look like, but instead of being nasty I am just going to say that I think it's great! Christina is gorgeous! And Hallelujah, Christina is normal. Sometimes she has to pop to the shops in good old comfy clothes. Sometimes she can't be bothered to pop her contacts in. Sometimes she wants to give her face a break for all the make up, and just pull her hair into a pony tail. She is just like the rest of us. She needs a little make up and some magic undies to look her best. Friday night I glam up, with all the glitter, mascara and hair spray that entails, and then on Saturday morning I look like Ozzy did my eyeliner and I fall out of bed and into a hoodie and jeans, my only purpose to locate a fry up as soon as possible. To say I don't look my best would be an understatement. But I am usually with someone I love, laughing over the previous nights drunken transgressions and mortifications, and not giving a flying fork about what I look like. It makes me love Christina even more if that's her Saturday morning ritual too.

Where thou art, that is home - Emily Dickinson

Over a month without a post - pitiful I know! Lame excuse, but life has been pretty crazy busy over the last month, and mainly due to a gypsy relocation - that's right me and my little caravan got all packed up and moved house. And what a painful process moving always is - lucky it is a lot like child birth in that you forget how hideous it is as soon as the last box is unpacked, otherwise we really would never move house again, and they would be taking me out of my current abode in, well, a box.

I find that, without fail, halfway through every moving process I vow to never buy another thing I can not consume, and contemplate leaving the rest of my crap to the next poor occupier, as I push seldom worn clothes and never read books into straining cartons. As per usual, I found long lost (and forgotten) socks and hair pins coexisting peacefully in the forest of hair and dust swirling under my bed. Down sofas were a myriad of lighters and pens - both items long thought to be extinct in our house hold, and behind bookshelves a singular bauble or Quality Street - remnants of a festive season long passed. Successful packing I find starts with sorting everything by type, ensuring that books are in one box, toiletries in another, a bag for shoes etc. However towards the end I always find there are items that missed their boxes sealing that now end up in an ever increasing pile of jumble that I no longer want or need. But as I have already packed its mate in another box, or promised it to someone who has failed to collect it I know I am going to have to make the ultimate moving error - a miscellaneous box. Filled with batteries that may or may not be flat, long obsolete phone chargers, mismatched earrings and forgotten coffee cups. I know the likelihood is that it will move with me, unopened, into eternity.

Unpacking, for me anyway, is a far happier prospect - I love rediscovering my possessions in a new environment. Putting pictures on walls, and loading shelves with trinkets gives old mementos a new lease on life. This move was even more exciting than usual - for I was moving from a room reminiscent of Harry Potter's cupboard under the stairs into an Olympic sized boudoir. My double bed, swaddled in layers of violet, lavender and plum, seems endless and I can lay in it for hours enjoying my fourth floor view of Mary Poppins-esque London chimneys. I revel in the fact that it takes me more than four steps to cross to the door, and I have so much cupboard space (comparatively) I am tempted to store one cardigan per shelf. The paint is peeling around the windows, the carpets probably witnessed the days of Thatcher and I am not mad for cream walls, but none of it matters - it's huge and it's mine! Home, for the moment, is certainly where my heart is.