What's up with Gordon Ramsay?

A few years ago, Gordon Ramsay was just a chef with a potty mouth and a face like a sharpei. Now he's turned into some kind of sex symbol.

Don't believe me? Then tune into Gordon Ramsay's Hotel Nightmares. Yes, our furrow faced friend has stepped out of the kitchen and is using his expertise as a seasoned meanie to lambast hotel owners who really should know better than to use Auntie Dorothy's floral nightgown as a bedspread or allow great wads of hair to collect in the drain.

When we're not treated to views of Gordon's trademark expressions of disbelief and horror, signified by ever more rapid rubbing of his brow and eyes, there is the odd money shot: just the other day, I caught a peek of his pert little bum (actually, it's neither) as he stepped into the shower. The thought did occur to me: my, how far Gordon's come. He started out cooking rump, and now he's showing his.

I did, however, find this little splash of nudity bizarre, coming as it did in the middle of a programme highlighting the problem of inadequate security at hospitality establishments. Nonetheless, Gordon carried it off with flair, managing to appear simultaneously coy and furiously put out by the hotel's shortcomings, as if it were somehow the manager's fault that he had to take his clothes off to shower. Also, I won't pretend it wasn't refreshing to have a man's bits flashed across my TV screen, even if his bum is about 99th on my list of posterior must-sees, hovering somewhere between Bill Crosby and the guy who pumps gas at the Shell on the corner of my road.

 

Mind if I don't

It all started innocurously enough: back in 1939, faced with the fear that the Nazis were about to start banging on Britain's door, the government dreamed up a propaganda campaign that spoke directly to the nation's fortitude and ability to keep drinking tea even while the SS were polishing their jackboots. Keep Calm and Carry On, they said (I would write 'urged', but it hints at the very kind of strong emotion that is swallowed up by the stiff upper lip). Although this stirring slogan was printed on posters, their distribution was rather limited, so the entire campaign was all rather under the radar. Until 2012, when 15 new posters came to light, and what followed was anything but calm.

All of a sudden, the need for calm was bleated at us from all manner of items: from scatter cushions, from cakes, from bunting. Never before has calmness been so feted; if the number of instructions to keep calm and carry on is anything to go by, then we are a society prone to dropping our pens, remote controls, shopping lists (or whatever the case may be) and falling into an eye-rolling, foot-stomping, hyperventilating fit with nary the slightest provocation.

Personally, I find that this chirpy little tagline has a very unsoothing effect. It makes me so irritated, that immediately I want to fly into a wild rage and rip whatever is bearing the slogan to pieces. This might be because it has become absorbed into other trends that I absolutely loathe: botanical prints, peter pan collars,cupcakes and ceramic bunnies - basically, anything that is commonly described as 'lovely' or 'sweet'. So, yes, put a poster in front of me saying 'Keep calm and have some chocolate', 'Keep calm and hug a ceramic bunny', or 'keep calm and have a pedicure', and I will gouge your eyes out. After that, I will, indeed feel far more serene.

I wonder if there is a male counterpoint to all this Zooey Deschanel, crochet-type calmness. Are there any navy blue posters out there saying, "Keep calm and watch some rugby", "Keep calm and eat some biltong" or "Keep Calm; it's still there".

There are, however, some iterations of the line that I have found and like very much: I will not keep calm and you can shut the fuck, says the one, while the other says Freak out and go hysterical. Far more my line of behaviour.

And so, with apologies to Dr. Seuss and Sam I am, I have composed a little rhyme:

I will not keep calm.
I will not keep calm in a barn,
I will not keep calm on a farm.

I will not keep calm and eat a cupcake,
I'm chubby enough for goodness' sake.

I will not hug a ceramic bunny
I find them neither cute nor funny.

I will not keep calm and wash my hair
I will not keep calm and dance on air
I like to lose my temper, so there.

I will not keep calm and carry on
I tried it once, and found it's wrong.


 

Choosing shoes

Forgive the conceit, but I think that, in my former unbabied life, I managed to be slightly glamorous. When my hair wasn't plunging, lemming-like, down the drain, it was always GHD'd into helmet-like submission; I could prance, goat-like, in high heels, and I owned a pair of jeans that I actually looked good in (again, this sounds like bragging, but considering my upper and lower bodies are so at adds with each other, it looks like two different people were joined together at the waist, this is no mean feat). I even owned a stock of vintage dresses so that I could be pretentious at gallery openings and the like.

Ah, how I miss the polish of those days of yore. I think of them with the fond nostalgia of McCaulay Culkin remembering the eighties; they are a blinking mirage of fabulousness casting a shadow over the distinctly unglamorous me that stares back in the mirror every morning.

For there's no getting around it: I look like a potter. Not just any potter; a vegan one. Someone who eats sprouts and has an earthworm composting unit.

I have my hair to thank for this new image: having escaped the confines of its bob, its behaving like a defiant teenager. Not quite straight, it refuses to be curly either. Instead, it hangs around in unflattering frills around my face, making me look like a sad spaniel or, worse still, like Jan van Riebeeck after a late night.

Then there are my eyebrows. I have no idea what shape my eyebrows are, since I have been plucking them religiously since university. In fact, back in those days I tended to get a little carried away, and consequently resembled a surprised Marlene Dietrich. Nowadays, either my vigilance has waned or those little little hairs have become far more enduring - make that sneaky, actually, as many's the time that I check to see if a plucking is in order, decide the answer is no, and wake up the next morning looking like Fuzzy Felt has been affixed to my forehead.

By far the greatest contributor to my new down-home look, however, are my shoes. I actually have great shoes tucked away in my cupboard: shoes that make your heart give a little squinch, that are so beautiful you don't want to touch them. But there is little call for seven centimeter heels while I am doing a mommy shuffle, so I tend to stick to sandals. The problem with this is that I seem to have neglected updating my 'shoedrobe' last year, and therefore have to choose between several variations of hideous gladiators. They're all bad, but by the worst pair by far looks like they have leprosy, with little scags of old silver paint hanging desperately to straps that have started to curl at the sides. I hate to admit it, but these are also the most comfortable - which means that (arrest me now, fashion police), they're the pair I wear most often.

This week, I took myself in hand. Begone, aura of clay and kiln, I thought to myself - and so, in a moment laden with expectation and excitement, I stepped into Woolworths. Sadly, though, it has been some time since I went shopping, as my paranoia about Overstimulating Leya means thatr my outings are generally restricted to the kind of restaurants that have jumping castles and hot dogs on the menu. I therefore found myself terribly out of practice. Oh, the selection - there were flatforms and platforms, ballet pumps (not a great choice for summer) and sandals with narrow neon strips, with silk flowers, with kitten heels, with high heels - but there was not, alas, a simple, wear it with anything plain shoe, the wardrobe solultion my ugly silver gladiators presented all those years ago.

Bombarded by colour, materials and choice, I started whimpering. Leya started whimpering too. It was horrible. I turned tail and ran, as fast as one can go pushing a pram the size of a Hummer.

I now feel very sad: a golden opportunity to look like someone who understands what is meant by 'colour blocking', wasted. I now have to concentrate on rebuilding my shopper's focus and getting back out there, like a divorcee going out for drinks.

The only thing is, no matter how well I prepare for my next shopping excursion, the fact remains: I will have to walk into the shop in my leprous gladiators, hoping no one looks at them while I try on new pairs. A walk of shame, if ever there was one.

Dating and disasters

One thing I've noticed as a new mom is that other new moms seem to be on a bit of a friend recruitment drive. It's almost like speed dating - we meet at baby massage, moms and tots or whatever other baby-centred activity is taking place that day, and then invite each other for coffee. Ostensibly, this is so that we can build up a circle of friends for our offspring. However, I have not noticed Leya partaking in any serious conversations with her peers at these get togethers, so I infer that what's really going on here is that my fellow moms have, like me, realised that our old friends are losing patience with our habit of consistently arriving half an hour later than arranged and staring at them with the zombie eyes of the exhausted, while making incorrect responses because our brains simply don't keep up any more.

Sadly for me, my mommy dating has not, so far, been an overwhelming success. I don't think I was ever much good at normal dating. I had some awful habits that, aware of them though I was, I simply couldn't kick. My hair, for example: I'd constantly whip it around to create the same effect as that caused by those industrial fans used during photo shoots. It didn't help that at key points during my dating career I was actually experiencing some unfortunate hair loss, so far from tossing about a mane, the one or two resilient little sprouts that were still, magically, clinging to my scalp, would bob a little unsteadily before I would remember that this was probably not the way to impress.

My second strategy focused around my mouth: I was a compulsive pouter. I'm actually pulling this face while I write this blog, and even now, I can feel how, as my lips assume their fish-like position, my shoulder juts forward and my head cocks just a little to the right. How any of my dates managed to keep a straight face is beyond me.

Nor can I pretend that my date behaviour was sufficiently charming to make up for these foibles. The worst date I ever had saw me inviting my hapless male friend in for a coffee. As we crossed the threshold into my kitchen, we both noticed that my dog had left a present on the floor. I'm sure you'll agree that pooh is pure kryptonite for romance but I, filled with the confidence of several glasses of wine, believed I was sufficiently winsome to make him disregard any lamentable additions to the decor. "Oh, a pooh," I chuckled coquettishly (and rather redundantly), breezily stepping over it to put the kettle on; not noticing until later that my date had appeared rather reluctant to drink from my mugs. Who can blame him, given the apparent hygiene challenges.

I like to think that I am no longer quite such a dating disaster, but my ventures into mommy dating have proved that I am. My porridge brain has left my rapier wit somewhat dulled, and my banter is decidedly more bland than brilliant. In fact, I have degenerated into outright Spanglish, frequently using whatever word first pops into my head to fill in my blanks. Thus, my bemused husband may be informed that we are having dinner with Chris and hairy, or that I am going to Panado to pick up some yoga quickly.

Having known me for 20 years, he finds it all sweetly comical, but my new acquintances are less beguiled by my verbal trip ups. Take my latest mommy date, for example: from the outset, I had been on the back foot, as she was wearing makeup and I was wearing a vomit stain on my shoulder. It wasn't long before I realised that there was no way I could hold up my end of the dialogue; a conclusion which was confirmed when she wittily informed me that her friend has coined a term for that moment when you're so happily immersed in singing in your car that you lose track of everything else: "Oblivioke". I became momentraily excited, remembering how, years ago, I had killed myself laughing as my sister recounted an embarrasing 'Oblivioke' moment: she had been pouring all the passion of an unrequited crush into a duet with Celine Dion, a performance complete with the anguished flinging of her hands from the steering wheel to her hair, only to look up and find some rather dishy guys laughing at her in the car parked alongside her at the robot. Thrilled that I might, at last, have something vaguely amusing to contribute to the conversation, I tried to translate what was happening in my head. It came out as: "that happened to my sister, once." My mommy date looked at me encouragingly, willing me to complete the story and come up with a punchline, then tactfully turned her attention to her cappucino when it became clear this wasn't going to happen.

I haven't heard from her since, just like I never heard from Kitchen-Pooh Boy. But I am not alarmed. Just as I found my husband, a man who would happily drink coffee from a none too clean kitchen just so he could spend more time with me, so I am confident I will find a friend who agrees that going to mosquito to have some matte black is a sterling idea.

 

Good reads

Yesterday, one of my friends sent me a link to an article about all that's wrong with Dan Brown's writing (check it out here, it's hilarious http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/6194031/The-Lost-Symbol-and-The-Da-Vinci-Code-author-Dan-Browns-20-worst-sentences.html0. My favourite line is definitely "Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own". Yes, I think if your flesh was on fire, you'd definitely know it. Chances are you might not even need the stench of burning skin to alert you to the fact.

It brings to mind another of my favourite lines from a book, this time by Martina Cole. Martina, if you haven't read her before, bills herself as "the person who tells it like it really is", which makes me think of Deborah Patta; although I think their writing styles might be a little difference. For example, I don't think Deborah would ever write something like, "One drink had turned into nearly a whole bottle and now she was out of her brain. She was also up for a fight, or failing that, a takeaway." Because the two are completely interchanegable, you know. Often, I'm craving pizza so much that the person I'm talking to starts to resemble a chatty margharita, but because it's one of those weeks when I'm watching the carbs, I'll put down the Mr. D menu and ask them to punch me in the nose instead.

Another favourite bit of writing comes from Wilbur Smith. Now, before I read my first Wilbur Smith novel I didn't know that he was famous for his sex scenes. And my word, what sex scenes they are. The one that particularly grabbed my notice described the heroine's 'Tammy' (clearly, this was in the days before Gray's Anatomy introduced the world to the vajayjay) as being so proud and beautiful it belonged on the head of a lion. A vagina-headed lion. If that wouldn't make the cars pile up at the Kruger Park, then I don't know what would.

Of course, no discussion of sex and books would be complete without, you guessed it, Fifty of Shades of Grey. I have not read this trilogy - if there are fifty shades of grey in my private life, they refer to the washed out hue of my granny pants, not my proclivities. I therefore can't cast any aspersion on the writing, but what I do find interesting about this phenomena is the gigantic proportions it has taken on. I have always found it rather endearing that the literary world has it's own fashions. Remember, for instance, when dog books were the 'new black'; a fad started by Marley and Me. But now sex, something people have been doing something for centuries, has become, well sexy. Never mind that it's like eating; something that, for most people, is just there. No longer does it hover politely in the corner, waiting for someone to introduce it with a smirk and a snigger. Oh no, EL James has succeeded where Justin Timberlake left off, and if the giant stand of 'erotic literature' at Exclusive Books is anything to go by, sexy really is back. To the extent that, alongside the also-rans that inevitably pop up in the wake of a tremendous success, there is the the Fifty Shades of Grey diary, presumably a little journal for you to write down your dirtiest imaginings.

It would be interesting to find out whether anyone has mentioned any vagina-headed lions in theirs.

Phantom Limb

When I fell pregnant with Leya, one of the things that I couldn't quite wrap my head around was the fact that I would never be alone again. At the time, not knowing how much I would love motherhood, I saw this as an enormous drawback - the surrender of my solitude.

Now, I can never imagine being apart from her. I'm ashamed to say I have passive aggressive battles over her with her nanny - yes, the woman I have hired for the express purpose of looking after her while I work often falls like a skittle as I casually bump her out of the way to be the first one to the change mat. Whoever thought I would fight to be the one to change a nappy with the same 'out of my way' tenacity as a single girl trying to catch the bouquet after too much champagne.

When I do have to hand her over, I find that I miss my baby like an amputee misses a phantom limb. In fact, I act in pretty much the same manner. This is evidenced by my incessant 'mommy shuffle'. Ever mother has her own version of the shuffle - mine is particularly vociferous, sometimes involving a few stamps of such volition they would do a furious flamenco dancer proud. There is a lot of bending and swaying involved, too. Usually, I don't feel too embarrassed by my mommy shuffling - as one acquaintance recently observed, when you get together with a bunch of parents, it often looks like they all need to pee, so intent are they on their various bobbings and bouncings. Also, some people's mommy shuffles are far more embarrassing than mine - recently, I saw one which closely resembled a particularly fraught interpretive dance performance. But what makes mine so cringey is the fact that it doesn't end once I've successfully rocked Leya to sleep. Often, I find myself weaving from side to side, bending my knees vigorously and humming long after I've placed her in her cot.

Most recently, this happened at the bank. It was hot; the queue was long, and before I knew it I was rocking gently to and fro and doing rhythmic mini squats. The people around me looked down at their hands. We all felt awkward.

I've noticed I do it while grocery shopping, too. I'll insert a little spring into my step, so that my simple heel-toe becomes something almost balletic, as I traverse the aisles, warbling along to the in-house station.

It would seem that my entire life has become centred around building the skills required to put babies to sleep. But, while I can't pretend this isn't socially undesirable behaviour, I'm the one smiling when Leya shuts those eyes, unable to resist a motion that has been perfected after many hours spent waiting in lines.