Take off your spanx, Fashion Week is over

I proclaim that forthwith, London Fashion Week is over. 

Finally, those brownies are brought back into the shop windows, and the streets of London are no longer littered with people who cannot walk in their shoes. I had to keep myself from offering food to passing models, who look no less starved than all these Somali children they keep showing on the telly. 

My personal highlight was a journalist's remark on Friday, who, standing next to me in Covent Garden, asked me 'So, are you one of the plus-size models?'. It took a while to seep in that he had insulted me, rather than commented on the effort I had made with my hair, or with my outfit. What. A. Wanker.

I spent the rest of Fashion Week wearing the same outfit, sporting my limp, lifeless hair out and about to make a statement. I just have to figure out what it was.

Hoozah, now that Fashion Week is over, which as every year marks the seasonal end of summer, I can progress into Autumn, and dedicate my waking hours to the consumption of sugar, and fat, and carbs. It is the Holy Trinity of nutritional crimes, but what do I care? I am proudly modelling plus-sizes, remember? 

There is however a fourth category that, every shopping, startles me anew when I am visiting my local Tesco's. Meat, the animal matter packed in plastic, is lying in its little white coffins, and in my book, this is where it is supposed to remain. Not that I am a vegetarian - I love steak, the occasional cremated bacon bit, and chicken - but I abhor buying the stuff, let alone cooking it. Meat has a weird effect, looking at me in the aisles, 12 meatballs staring with 24 greasy eyeballs into my basket, saying 'we're going to clog your arteries'. But it is not the health factor that turns me off meat - did I mention brownies? - it is not a moral choice either. It's an aesthetic choice. I may be quoting Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy here, but meat just does not fit into my bigger aesthetic picture. I shall not desert into the camp of vegetarians, because there are still aesthetically pleasing or disguised forms of meat around, available for purchase. Lucky Chip do an amazing job with their cheeseburger (meat concealed under cheese and pickle), or Gaucho and their steaks, who practise a vital simplicity with their cuts and presentation. But do not come near me with a beige pork chop, or an overcooked piece of beef. These are things I had to grow up on, that follow me like a bad, beige shoe sole nightmare.

Speaking of nightmares: an Ode to the Nightbus

Run, darling run, it's your bus

Waiting no longer than it must

Your bags weigh heavy, your feet even heavier,

Your mind the heaviest.

2am, a glory time. Outside in the cold air

Your knight in a red armour

Stopping off on Broadway where you

Find salvation in its cosy seats.

But, alas, what ho! Another passenger,

and there two more. Sitting on their comfy 

Arses, snoring, eating, snogging, ealing

Themselves in the heat of the Nightbus.

The stale air, takeaway and fart, and beer,

And old perfume, and stuffy coats, and no coats,

And the scars of the night before the morning 

After. Looks are all on you, your audience 

Welcomes you stranger with hostile eyes, but why,

Why hostility? Publicly transporting, the Nightbus

Winds itself around the corners of the Eastern Land, 

Through wafts of curry and cold fat,

The perfume of another world, to the one proclaimed,

Like a second saviour on the blind of your vessel:

Oxford Circus.

Reluctantly, a stranger is forced to free you a seat,

And you sit amongst the mingling night smells, so

Familiar, reproduced every night, in a continuing

Performance. The night. The Nightbus. Your stop.

Off.

The long and even longer of it

A lesser Alice once sang:
school's out forever.

It's back to school folks, only that it isn't. Not anymore. I am done. The agony of the first day shall no longer hover over me - not in academic terms at least.

Before you ask for the details of my psychotherapist, I have not, in fact, found a solution to the age-old phenomenon of the first-day-anxiety, or indeed, the first-week-anxiety. I have just left education. Full stop.

The relief I am not feeling perfectly reflects the bouts of knowledge that I am not getting from a year of postgraduating my way through London: all I get is the waft of expired meat from the cornershop. It summarises what has been going on this last year, and unfortunately, there is no health and safety committee running to the rescue. If you are traveling to the Strand take some smelling salts with you  - the rot is unbearable.

There were happy times though (rummaging through archives), and it is strange to see familiar names and faces spread all over the world again, right through to the edges, like the most accurately garnished Nutella Bagel you have ever had. The back-to-school feeling is met with the feeling of losing irreplaceable friends, who remain on the same planet, but are in another galaxy. Life goes on, and that's the long and even longer of it, irrevocably, sadly, and with much anticipation of the things that are going to happen, because they will. A stand-still is not an option (as much as I would love to hang around in this moment for quite a bit, just enough to let everything settle) I run, just like everybody else, with the times, and against time. Lucky us. Poor us.

Go to Notes in Covent Garden. They are a
hipster, independent, relaxed café with
excellent nibbles, coffee and wines!

 While I am sitting here, over iced coffee and iced olives (pretentious idiot that I am), different lives happen. Lives that were once united in their hate against a prestigious (cough) university on the north side of the river, and that are now scattered around the globe as in a gigantic Monopoly game. As I have only ever played the Belgian version from the 1950s, I have no idea what the modern day equivalent of all the boulevards and rues is, but I imagine that some people will end up with four hotels in the Rue Neuve, while others constantly hop between Gare du Nord and Gare du Midi, and even others are happy to avoid the Caisse de Communauté. I have always preferred 'Spiel des Lebens' (LIFE for all Anglophones), because you had a car at your disposition, and there was this wheel in the middle that was slightly more arbitrary than the cards in Monopoly. As opposed to Monopoly, you could marry (though only into the opposite sex - might have to be revised now), and there was a sense of philanthropic accomplishment, in addition to all the money. Weird - me talking about philanthropy.

Isn't this the BEST loo in
London/the world??

So, I resume where I left it about a year ago. With it, I sort of mean my life, plans, etc., when friends re-scattered across the world, and life just continued, completely oblivious to all the details. I, however, am very attentive to all the details in this (my) life, and here is a bit of visual trivia (see picture). A textual analysis shows a water closet, white suite with a neon orange lid. In the background we see white tiles with black drawings. It is the loo at 157 Brick Lane, my local watering hole. As a person who rates places by the standard of their facilities, including hand soap and scent, I appreciate the effort these guys put into this award-worthy loo. Their coffee isn't too bad either.

The weather is now turning from soppy grey Summer-plagiat to Indian Summer. As always when things are shifting. With a bit of luck they shift in the right direction. If not, I'll still have the loo.