Meanies at Matalan

Matalan are in my bad books. To be fair they were never in my good books, as I don't think I've ever bought anything from there. Nevertheless, I spotted this dress last month in Look and then again this month in Cosmo, but it is still not available on their website!!
When I first saw it in print, I navigated my way into the unfamiliar territory of their website, only to be disappointed. Now Matalan.co.uk attributes about 100 hits a day to me and my urgency to own this dress. Please, Matalan, sort yourselves out and stop hiding this dress from me. Your only losing yourself a potential customer.

A Bit Too Blasé

This morning, I woke up to find that my boyfriend had not come to bed at all and instead played on his PlayStation 3 all night, with complete indifference to the fact that he had to teach English to a pack of uninterested children all day today. This in itself is not an unusual occurrence. He often gets "lost" in his game-play and forgets to come to bed, so often that I joke he loves his PlayStation more than me (which I'm pretty sure is true sometimes). So it wasn't the shock of him playing PlayStation at 6 in the morning which threw me. It was what he said to me, as I rolled my eyes knowing he would be grumpy and agitated from a lack of sleep for the rest of the week.

"I was mugged on the way home last night." As simple as that. Not even a warning of "Now don't worry, but...". He went on to recount the experience, and informed me that as he was walking along the street, two frightening figures bulldozed him into an alleyway and told him to give them his money. Instead of handing it over, he chuckled, said no and tried to explain that he didn't have any cash on him. It was only when the larger of the two, seized his neck that he decided to offer them the two pound coins he had in his wallet. Oddly, they happily accepted this measly settlement and let him go on his way. Even more strangely, this all took place right next to a cash machine. Now either these two muggers were incredibly stupid, or, my boyfriend being so calm, consequently calmed them down and diffused the situation. I'm convinced that if it had been me, I would have been hysterical with fear and would have ended up emptying my bank account for them, with them eventually killing me just to stop my frenzied tears!

As soon as he told me this story, I insisted that we call the police, but he sneered at the suggestion. I suppose it was only £2 but the way I see it, it could have been a lot worse. Perhaps the fact that he plays so many video games, many which revolve around an aim to kill people or steal from people has made him immune to the horrors of reality. Should I reluctantly thank his second love, or should I "accidentally" kick it ten times until it doesn't work anymore, so that he can rejoin the real world?

P.S. Anyone reading this who lives in Swansea, avoid The Kingsway late on Sunday nights. Unless you fancy paying £2 for the privilege of a quick bit of strangulation. Each to their own.

H&M Cater to All

As an add on to my previous post Zipping up I want all the curvalicious women out there to have a look at H&M's new collection, Inclusive. The range is an online exclusive and I predict the whole lot will be selling out rather quickly. H&M already boasts the Big is Beautiful (BiB) range, but Inclusive really embraces its namesake and includes everyone. With sizes from 6-28, H&M offers all shapes and sizes the opportunity to be fashion forward. Here are a few of my favourite pieces......

You can shop the entire collection here.

The Chronicles of Nostalgia

What a difference an hour can make. Last night I screamed until my throat was raw, and waved my arms until I couldn't feel them anymore, at the Westlife concert in the Cardiff International Arena. That alone probably makes me sound like a twelve year old, when in fact I'm 22 this month, but the utter exhilaration I felt when they were singing all the golden oldies that I used to listen to locked up in my room, was really reminiscent of my tweenage years, when we were so in love with these bands that we thought our hearts would break if we didn't meet them.
So, on a nostalgic high, my friend and I drove back to Swansea with Westlife as the soundtrack to our journey, blaring out of the speakers of her little Fiat with us croaking along to all the words. It was only as we pulled up to my flat that I was reminded that I am not a pre-teen anymore, sheltered from the big bad world by a mollycoddling mother and a group of friends whose idea of hell raising was getting slightly tipsy in our parent's houses. No, I am now an adult, albeit a student at the moment, living in a world where empty cans of lager, the smell of urine, and a couple rubbing cocaine into their gums, all at the front door to my flat, is rife.
Is it too much to ask that when I come home late at night, I do not have to trip over bottles of beer and be overwhelmed by the pungent stench of piss? Or should I just wake up, and recognise that my cloistered yet complacent childhood is far behind me?

Zipping up.

Have you ever walked into a shop, picked up a gorgeous dress in your size and taken it into the changing rooms, perfectly confident that it will fit? And then the next thing you know, you are wiggling around, having a hot flush, trying to do up the zip. When this happens to me, I get all hot and bothered jumping around and worrying that I'm going to end up breaking the zip, that I don't even bother trying the next size up. I just retreat to the safety of home and demolish a bar of chocolate to comfort myself. Illogical, I know, seeing as chocolate is probably the reason I can't do the zip up in the first place!

My big issue with the high street is the difference in sizes from shop to shop. I suppose it doesn't matter so much if you are a petite size 6-10 like most of my friends. But when you are a voluptuous size 16/18 it can make clothes shopping a depressing experience. After years of feeling inadequate when trying on outfits in shops, my mum now avoids clothes shopping like the plague. If she does have to buy a dress for an occasion she automatically heads to her old faithful, Wallis. Shouldn't shopping be an exhilarating adventure for women? How can that be the case if you feel you can only purchase from one shop on the high street?

I have had many similar retail disasters myself, but I refuse to let my size affect the pleasure I get from perusing through all the gorgeous dresses. Even if they won't actually fit me I can still appreciate their beauty, as if they are a piece of art.

What I'm Wearing

To go along with my earlier feelings of nostalgia for an era that I have never known, my outfit has for the day has taken on a pretty, vintage look. I feel like a young woman in the 1940s with this H! by Henry Holland dress on, so to add a bit of edge I'm wearing opaque tights and chocolate brown, heeled, shoe boots.

Vintage and Pretty with a Twist

Good Clean Fun

I want to know how to dance. I don't mean out on a Saturday night with all your girlfriends, shaking your bodacious booty's around your shoes and handbags, with your hands in the air like you just don't care. No, I mean what my grandparents call "proper dancing".
I watched the scene from Michael Cimino's film, Heaven's Gate(1980), where the recent graduates of Harvard University's class of 1870 whirl the women present around the lawn so effortlessly it was as if they were floating on air. I had no idea what dance they were twirling across the grass, but it got me thinking about waltzing and foxtrotting and quick-stepping. Other than competitive dancing, ballroom dances don't seem to have a place in our society any more.
Hundreds of years ago, ballroom dancing was for the wealthy, the elite, the upper crust members of the population, while the poorer communities would frolic to folk music without much structure. Although this dissociation of dance dissolved in the early to mid 1900s, with dance halls all over the country and with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies making ballroom dancing fashionable, it seems that other than ballroom dancing at a competitive level the masses are more interested in "dropping it low and shaking it on the flo'". Our new version of the folk dance with ballroom dancing now a fierce sport where if you aren't good enough, there is no point of doing it.

The New Folk Dance

Don't get me wrong, I love nothing better than getting a bit tipsy and hitting the dance floor to shimmy and shake to all the songs in the charts. I just think that I'd like to experience the wholesome fun that my grandparents seemed to enjoy so much, dancing with a partner in town hall to a band, as a bit of a change to the drunken, sweaty mess that looks back at me from the mirror after a particularly energetic night out.