My bag

Observer Woman made me spit and splutter last Sunday, and Kaz has unwittingly reminded me and sent the splutterings spiralling once more.
First we had the style awards for 2007, and nary an affordable pretty piece among them, with an award for the shoe that wouldn't die, an item that needs swift burial, and preferably cremation to obliterate the eye smacking colours first. The awards were all unbelievably inane; surely women don't actually care if Posh looks amazing or awful in hot pants?
Then we are expected to read billionaire Signor Armani's witterings: "I am lucky that I have built myself beautiful houses that I staff with people who really know me and what I like to eat". To add to the shallowness we have a woman sharing her views on men whilst posing like a porn star complete with no knickers and f-me pumps. At this point I want to scream. Thank goodness for Carole Cadwalladr failing to be taken in by Dame Westwood who should stick to designing clothes.
We have important journalism about the appalling levels of rape and sexual assault in Haiti and the contrast with the previous idiocy is so strong that it physically jars.
And thus to bags.
The bags we are told women are buying in their zillions, cost more than feeding a baby for a year. Or a complete household depending on your lack of taste. Now, I have been known to stroke a Mulberry bag longingly. I am not completely immune to loveliness and I admire craftsmanship. And I like their messenger bags (intended for men) precisely because they are made fit for purpose, are low key and avoid being swaddled in painful buckles or slathered in eye watering pink patent leather. The cost, although BIG treat time, could not feed the five thousand.
My own bag, pictured above, was from the local agricultural merchant. It is a game bag made of strong canvas, leather and brass buckles and has a rubberised pouch insert to keep your freshly killed rabbit or brace of pheasants from staining the outer. I have many, many compliments on my bag. All from men. All from men from Devon who wouldn't use the word "man-bag" if it was the last word they could utter. It cost me about £35. Yah boo.
However, I have to admit that the mag's extraordinary photograph of an almost naked Naomi Campbell had me more wide-eyed than a wide eyed frog.

21.12.07 Postscript: my bag (well, not MY bag, but new ones just like it) is now being sold for £62.50! Do you think I have conferred some mini fame upon it and created some local inflation? Nah.

The meme game

Thanks to le Chippy, followed swiftly by Jan Tregeagle, I have yet another meme (or more appropriately meme) to send on its merry way. If this carries on, I will have no secrets left.

What was I doing ten years ago?
It was a Sunday, and according to my diary the day was blank - but I was no doubt recovering from the previous day's surfeit of stunning outdoor international theatre at its very best - and all a decade before The Sultan's Elephant was a twinkle in a Parisians eye.

What was I doing one year ago?
I was working in London for the day, with a view of Tate Modern, and meeting more than 40 of the most interesting artists and arts managers in the capital. I was also celebrating my first year living in Devon.

Five snacks I enjoy (only five?)
Halloumi, fried in olive oil and served with rocket and raspberry vinegar - it's posh cheese for adults, and it squeaks!
Ready brek
Raspberries with clotted cream
Sausages - homemade, with friends and an old Kenwood
Chocolate puds - any luscious kind will do.

Five songs to which I know all the lyrics
If I were a rich man
I've farted
She was poor but she was honest
Every last word of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat (feel free to wipe that memory any time you like)
I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter (or perhaps a blog)

Five things I would do if I were a millionaire
I'd build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen... (actually no, I'd restore the old barns on the farm)
I'd fill my yard with chicks and turkeys and geese and ducks (and lots of art)
I wouldn't have to work hard (in reality I would probably work harder, but on the land, using muscles and no less brain)
I'd buy my sister a house with garden in central London - make that if I were a multi-millionaire
I'd have a party!

Five bad habits
Picking my feet
Snapping and snarling
Forgetting important things, remembering the minutiae
Innate laziness
Writing other people's to do lists

Five things I like doing
Walking the dogs
Eating with friends
Dibbling my toes in the sea
Lambing successfully
Reading in the sun

Five things I would never wear again
Zigzag orange and purple psychedelic flares
Yellow crocheted dress
A suit
Red stilettos....then again
Polo necks

Five favourite toys
Binker the bear
Twister
Newspaper fish
iPod
My Canon iXus

Phew. The baton is now passed to: Eurodog, Flowerpot Days, Keir Royale, Around My Kitchen Table and And Who Cares? Feel free to pick it up, to ignore it or to pity my revelations.

Everybody's doing it - please don't

No, no, no, no, no! If everybody does it there'll be none left for me! Selfishness rules. I don't want every urbanite to turn with relief to the countryside, or the rural world will become full of people like me (or like me but much richer and with different politics and intolerances). Once it was Paul Heiney, although he didn't last long, then it was Vic Reeves and Jonathan Ross (pig lovers both), and now it is Rosie Boycott and there are celebs and unknowns of every shape all at it. Please stop it, and in particular please stop writing books about it and stop making TV programmes about it or you'll just inspire more people to up sticks and move. Tell folks that if they want the rural life they should get an allotment (or a window box), keep a couple of ducks or hens in the garden, have a riding lesson on Saturdays and still be able to spend time at the theatre/gallery/footie stadium/nightclub by staying metropolitan. Tell them how your nails break in the countryside, how you have to be able to reverse your car for miles to the last passing place, how there are no parties, that the clothes shopping is crap and that vegetarians are strange loons limited to Totnes. Tell them that it ain't all roses and honeysuckle and that pigs escape, sheep die, tuberculosis is rife and that privacy is lost forever in a truly rural backwater. Show them the calluses on your hands, the dirt under your fingernails, the fallen arches that non-stop welly wearing develops (no more Jimmy Choos for you - arrgh he even has a Devon shoe!). Make up tales of lawlessness and rustling, of wild boars, panthers and wolves on the prowl and that the 999 services can spend two hours hunting down an address with no street name. Some naughty fun could be had with imaginative statistics too - 85% of rural schoolchildren fail to find a job perhaps, or 7 out of 10 city bonus purchasers find themselves being made redundant within twelve months of buying a hobby farm. You know the kind of thing. Spread the word. The countryside is a strange place - enter at your peril!

Girly undies

In a week of global despair, murder, grief and bloody madness, the fripperies of life can save you from entering a permanent gloom. When the weather is as gorgeous as this you can feel guilty for not being part of the Virginian mourning, but I refuse. Some love their thongs, but I love my bras and it's time to renew the stock. I will browse at length through my Bravissimo and Rigby and Peller catalogues and pick something perky, something lacey and something pink so that it's spring on the inside as well as the outside. It may all be covered up by my best holey farm clobber, but underneath I'm a paeon to womanhood and girly self-indulgence. The pigs can't see it, but they'll know from the (nattily controlled) bounce in my step that things are fine for the time being. It might even take their minds off the state of my feet.

Posh luggage

Up first thing in old trackie bottoms, thick socks, heavenly neoprene wellies and fleece, all covering nightie which is too cosy to take off, for early morning lamb check. Weather glorious but ominous rainbow and grey clouds with streaks joining the sky to the land on the next hill. Shove on battered leather hat that sheds rain beyond the back of my neck unless I bend forward, and feed the animal troupes. An hour later I'm done and hoik out luggage for packing my gear for London. The contrast between my smelly farming clobber and the smartness of my year-old trolley bag stops me in my tracks. The contrary lifestyles are now inches apart and clashing madly in colour and content. High heeled boots and clothes without barbed wire tears that rarely get worn here go into the bag. I'm off to my parallel existence.

Bras

Don't you just love 'em? I realised it wasn't just a personal deliciousness recently, when in the middle of her office a friend whipped up her top to show me the well-fitting bright fuschia bra she had just bought. I don't know if the sparkle of her smiley face was brighter than the colour of her new undergarments, but it was a close run thing. Years ago, when we visited Brazil together (working trip, honest, and it really was Brazil) the same friend was so intrigued by my collection of all black bras that she tried them on even though you could fit several of hers into.............you get the drift. On our return, finding an example of a black one in her company's lost property basket (well, it is a theatre company), she parcelled it up and sent it to me anonymously. It caused what I can only call a ruckus in the post-room.