embarrassment - Nothing good rhymes with Charlotte

23 unspoken promises behind every great female friendship

05/06/2016 by Charlotte Leave a Comment

1.That neither of us will ever say “I really shouldn’t” when the dessert menu comes and let that stop us ordering something.

2. That you’ll never mention it when I show up in a piece of clothing that clearly should have been ironed. I know it, you know it, but I just couldn’t be arsed, OK?

3. That wherever we are and whatever we’re doing, cake will always be an appropriate snack.

4. That if one of us fails to get the job or the boyfriend or the house that we wanted, the other will provide the required dose of IT’S THEIR LOSS ANYWAY, BABE, YOU CAN DO SO MUCH BETTER to restore our faith in humanity.

5. That whatever it is, you can tell me.

6. That you’ll smile and nod when I start talking about the level to which it is currently KICKING OFF in Coronation Street [or enter your own televisual favourite here] – despite not watching, caring, or wishing to hear a single detail more about it.

7. That if there is something on my face that shouldn’t be there, you will tell me STRAIGHT AWAY.

8. That I will always let you finish having a well-earned moan before I start to explain why things really aren’t that bad.

9. That if I’m being a dick, you’ll let me know. And that I’ll have the courage to do the same.

10. That when you ask me how ‘following my dreams’ is going, you’re prepared for a long and emotional response.

11. That when I cry at your wedding/birthday party/leaving do, you’ll be kind enough to lie and say that nobody noticed.

12. That we’ll run all photographic evidence of a night out that involved dancing passed each other before uploading it to social media.

13. That we can discuss the highs and lows of having bodies, bowels and brains without embarrassment. There’s no room for shame between friends.

14. That I may not have the required skirt, hair, or ability to kick my legs more than two inches above the ground, but I will be your cheerleader for life.

15. That ‘because I was planning to spend today doing absolutely nothing’ is a perfectly reasonable response to the suggestion of a get together. Everybody needs their space.

16. That I won’t let you walk around with food all over your top. I can’t promise I’ll always have a replacement on me, but I will dab the hell out of that stain like any good friend should.

17. That we won’t feel the need to beat each other around the head with our mistakes – but just to slowly place them under the other person’s eyes if it looks like they might accidentally start walking down that road again.

18. That a ‘What are you wearing tonight?’ text message sent ahead of an evening out will always receive a thorough response to ease the nerves of the woman who sent it (who is no doubt currently on her knees in front of her wardrobe and claiming she has so few clothes that she may as well just cut three holes in a bin bag and wear that etc.).

19. That we’ll both just pretend not to notice what happens to our hair in hot weather.

20. That you understand that when I buy a bag of Percy Pigs, it’s because I want to eat every single one of them. Best get your own packet, yeah?

21. That if you choose to spend your life with someone, I will not let you settle for anything less than the superhero you deserve.

22. That we’ll put the necessary effort in to making sure we’re still friends when we’re old and grey.

23. And that you’ll be kind enough not to mention that I am already both of those things.

A love letter to all the sweaty girls: You are not alone

24/01/2016 by Charlotte 1 Comment

Tray chic There are so many things that women are conditioned to think they’re not supposed to do. Sweating is one of them. Going to the toilet is another.

And it’s so strange because both definitely happen every single day.

As a woman who has always suffered from the charmingly named condition EXCESSIVE SWEATING I can confirm that this belief is particularly unhelpful.

There are people who say that men sweat and women perspire. Well, you can call it what you like, but it’s the same thing. It’s as basic as coughing or sneezing or yawning so loudly that you sound like Chewbacca. We all do it.

Yesterday, whilst out dancing at a friend’s birthday party, I was reminded of my true sweating credentials. I moved seamlessly from looking like a person who’d put a good couple of hours into straightening her hair, applying liquid eyeliner, and colouring in her lips with a pencil, to a shiny-faced mad woman who appeared to have just done 20 lengths in the swimming pool, and no amount of hand fanning, forehead dabbing or sticking my face out of a window could stop it. I mean, everybody was hot but this was ridiculous. If only I’d been flexible enough to slot myself into the Dyson hand dryer in the bathroom, I would have done it.

I first discovered that I had this issue when I was a teenager. As if growing up wasn’t already hard enough – boy troubles, friend fall-outs, and a permanent fear that I was going to be called a weirdo was already keeping me busy enough – but then I had this little treat thrown into the mix. Thanks very much, genetics.

It didn’t even have to be hot. I just had to be awake. Of course, heat made it worse, but for the real sweaters among us, Winter is no holiday. If anything it’s worse because nobody expects to see somebody mopping their brow when it’s minus one outside.

I became super strategic in my clothes buying. I knew what types of colours and materials were most likely to show patches, and which could shield a day’s worth of salt loss. I didn’t have much money at the time – because who does at that age – so I kept a small number of tops on rotation that shielded me from being outed as the sweatiest girl in town.

And then one day I heard my dad talking about a special type of deodorant that can help people who sweat too much. I’d never told anybody about my problem before – I just assumed I’d have to live with it forever and hope that eventually I’d grow out of it – so I was ecstatic to hear that maybe there was a way out.

I booked an appointment with my doctor and had to stop myself from crying when I asked him to please prescribe it for me. I was 16 and awkward and desperate to feel normal. It was going to take a lot more than a sweat gland annihilating roll-on to do that but it was a bloody good start.

And ever since then, things have been better because I’ve had some control. Like so many situations, knowing that there’s something you can do about it is everything. Of course, it doesn’t mean I’m cured, it’s just much more manageable. Now it only really kicks in when it’s actually hot, which helps.

Thankfully it doesn’t really affect my self-esteem too much these days. And I have a critical moment that happened in February 2006 to thank.

Leon and I had only been together a few months and we went to see The Arctic Monkeys play in Leeds. This was prime Monkeys time – we were at university in Sheffield and the whole city had gone mad for them.

We went to the front and jumped around and it remains to this day some of the most fun I’ve ever had. When they went off stage I realised my entire head, back, and chest was soaked, my hair was like wet string, and my eye make-up was a distant memory. I looked at Leon and said:

“Sorry, I must look disgusting.”

And he shook his head and said:

“No you don’t – you just look like you’ve had a really good time.”

And ever since, I’ve held onto that answer.

I know that if I go out and let my hair down, I’ll end up looking like I’ve been left out in the rain. I know that dancing for five minutes does to me what 45 minutes on a treadmill does to other people. When I look in the mirror I do feel pretty alarmed – I mean, that level of perspiration does nothing for a heavy fringe; if I went out partying more frequently I might need to reconsider my hair style – but at least it shows I’ve had a good time.

I’m not writing any of this down to gross you out, though I guess there’s a chance it might have that effect. I’m writing it down because this is the internet and those of us who have learnt to deal with the little surprises that life throws our way have a duty to talk about them so that others know that they’re not alone.

I think things have moved on quite a long way since I was young. The This Girl Can campaign has done us the world of good. Hey, guess what, women exercise and when they do it, they look like everybody does when they exert themselves – hot and a bit red in the face – and nobody cares.

We could spend our lives being worried that we might accidentally be revealed as having been human beings all along. That we’re not all that different after all. That our bodies need to do things to keep us alive.

But that feels like a terrible waste of time. For every moment that we’re doing that, we could be dancing to Beyoncé or Taylor Swift. Or The Arctic Monkeys.

I can’t imagine they’d let a bit of sweat get in their way.

Four things you should not do in hot weather

27/07/2014 by Charlotte 2 Comments

It’s hot out there. Even hotter when you have a laptop resting on your legs, as I’m currently discovering.

And though summer lifts our spirits, sends our consumption of cucumber filled drinks through the roof, and gives our feet a well-earned break from their usual woolly prisons, there are some aspects of life that are a little trickier during a heatwave.

This doesn’t mean summer is a bad thing – it is, in fact, the best thing since spring – we just need to adjust ourselves to cope with the sudden presence of a burning ball of fire in the sky.

And whilst magazines tell us what we should do in the heat – wear sun cream, buy a hat, consume our five-a-day (one Mars ice cream, two Soleros, and two Mini Milks), they don’t tend to tell us what we shouldn’t do. So I am here to do just that – here are four things I recommend you avoid doing on a hot day:

1. Sit down for any length of time
I’d forgotten how much a human being can sweat from the leg: a lot. And the problem with sitting down – the main activity a person wants to do to avoid passing out from heat exhaustion – is that it gives your legs the opportunity to really get cooking. It’s a well-known fact that there are places on the human body from which one is expected to sweat. I’m not saying I like it; I don’t have a photograph of a damp armpit as my screen saver; it’s just that everybody knows that it happens and generally has the manners to ignore it. But if you stand up to reveal that the backs of your legs have suddenly turned into Niagara Falls, that is going to come as something of a surprise to nearby citizens. So I recommend that you keep moving. Or if you do have to sit down for a long period, you may wish to adopt my extremely attractive tactic of rearranging whichever piece of clothing you’ve chosen to wear that day so that any such perspiration is absorbed by your chair. Form an orderly queue, boys!

2. Attempt physical contact
I tried to hold my husband’s hand last night on the way back from a restaurant. The last time he looked at me like that – like perhaps I didn’t know how life works – was when I managed to hit him on the head with a stone I was attempted to skim, even though he was standing behind me. Of course he didn’t want to hold my hand; it was all he could do to get through the walk home without melting. Advertising would have us believe that summer is such a sexy time of year – I’ll prance about in a bikini before my other half carries me across the beach on his back and then hilariously pretends to hurl me into the sea. This is not reality. What couples actually do in hot weather is go on strike from all physical contact. There is no prancing, more dragging of our hot, swollen feet. There are no piggybacks, just one person walking ahead of the other saying “I JUST WANT TO GET HOME AND INTO THE SHOWER!” and there are no amusing attempts to throw me into open water (though if I try to grab my husband’s hand again, that may change). It’s every man and woman for themselves in this weather. We’ll put our wedding rings back on in the autumn.

3. Straighten your hair
Let me ask you a question – do you feel like doing ironing right now? No? And, how about ironing your hair? Of course not. This is not the time to be subjecting your boiling brain to hot metal plates. And even if you did, and you managed to survive the experience without drowning in a pool of your own salty tears, if your hair is anything like mine, it’ll either just stick to the sides of your head (making me look like Peter Andre in the Mysterious Girl video) or it’ll expand to the size of a small bush. It’s just not worth the effort.

4. Wear make-up
The other day I left the house wearing a full face of make-up. Two hours later I went to the bathroom to discover that said make-up had travelled so far from where I had originally put it that it looked like somebody had taken a damp flannel to my cheeks. And to make it even better, I’d had at least two face to face conversations during that time with people who, unless temporarily blinded by the perspiration shine on my forehead, will definitely have noticed. Thanks for letting me know, guys! So I won’t be doing that again. These cheeks are staying bare until the weather drops a few degrees (that’s my facial cheeks, before you panic. It’ll never be that hot).

*mops brow* So there you have it. If you keep your hands to yourself, your foundation in its bottle, your hair in a ponytail and your legs-a-moving, you’ll survive the heatwave no problem.

Oh and one more thing – if the last two hours has taught me anything it’s that if you must use a laptop on a hot day, make sure you put it on a table. My knees are now so warm that I don’t think even an ice cream could cool me down. Though I will, of course, give it a try.

Friendship: It’s about quality not quantity

16/02/2014 by Charlotte Leave a Comment

It’s a strange moment when you suddenly stop worrying about whether you’ve got enough friends.

For years it’s a genuine concern. If you have a party, will anybody come? Do you get enough text messages that aren’t just from your mum or Domino’s Pizza? And exactly how many non-family birthday cards did you get last year?

At school, it always felt like size mattered in the chums department. The bigger the group you were a part of, the smaller the chance that you would find yourself sitting alone in French with nobody to tell that you’d been “à la piscine” at the weekend.

And at university a heavy group of pals meant people to sit sleepy-eyed with in lectures, to consume large sandwiches with at obscure times of the day, and to go out with of a Wednesday evening, rather than sitting at home doing a glossy magazine quiz about which FRIENDS character best reflects your personality. You already knew the answer to that anyway. (Gunther.)

And that’s not to undermine those friendships – they’re the making of some of the best days of your life – it’s just impossible to keep up with that volume of people once real life starts getting in the way.

The combination of going to work, eating meals, sorting through your post, washing clothes, filling the dishwasher, entering online competitions, watching The Magaluf Weekender, and actually going to sleep for more than four hours a night dominates most of the week. It’s a wonder you can keep on top of what’s going on with you, let alone anybody else.

So if you do manage to spend time with another human being – aside from your colleagues, the dude at the sorting office and your grocery delivery man – it’s because you really want to.

And now that you’re an adult, though you don’t demand much of that person in terms of time, you do when it comes to quality of friendship.

If I meet up with a pal and I ask how they are, I’m looking for a proper answer. I’m not looking for a fluffy “Yeah sure everything’s fine – shall we get the chicken?” response (although my answer will of course always be Yes), I want: “Right, strap in for a full-blown analysis of my life”. If I didn’t care then I wouldn’t have blocked out my Thursday night – you do know that Eastenders is shown on Thursday evenings, right?

And of course it works both ways. I want to know the ins and outs of what’s happening with you and then you, dear friend, are going to get the precise same from me. I have a husband who doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of “Please unplug the iron”, a fringe I can’t control, and a marshmallow habit I fear is getting out of hand – who else am I going to talk to about this sh*t?

A good catch up with a good friend is better for your soul than any drug, massage or – dare I say it – confectionery item money can buy. And the truth is that, at this age, most of us would rather spend our time with the buddies we know we can really chew the fat with – metaphorical and literal (and ideally BBQ sauce-covered) – than spend an evening with 50 people we hardly know just so that Facebook can see how popular we are.

Because those are the chums that are really worth giving up a night in front of the telly for. And that, my friend, is no small compliment.

Exercise is good for you, laziness is not…unfortunately

12/01/2014 by Charlotte Leave a Comment

Don’t you hate it when somebody who has been a member of a gym for all of, like, a week suddenly starts telling you about the virtues of exercise? Urgh, those people are so annoying.

In other news, I joined a gym this week and MY WORD do I feel good for it. I mean, sure, my thighs hurt so much on Friday afternoon that I feared I may never bend again, and my legs move in such a peculiar way when I’m on the cross trainer that I look like Kermit the Frog, but my heart hasn’t beaten this fast since Peter Andre released Mysterious Girl, so I can only assume I’m doing myself some good.

I’m the type of gym-goer that long term members hate, and here’s why:

1. I joined in January. This means that whilst I am full of good intentions now, they are very likely to have departed by the time the clocks go forward.

2. One of my favourite things about going to the gym is that it’s an excuse to go shopping. I purchased a pair of running-trousery-things (a technical term only us sporty types understand) on the sole basis that they have a luminous pink stripe on them. I had to buy new trainers because, unless I take-up basketball, my Converse ones are not really going to cut it (though, as you can see, they would match my new running trousers perfectly).

3. I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. I have to ask for help before I use any piece of machinery, including the changing room lockers.

4. I cough and splutter whilst swimming, which is extremely distracting for other people in the pool.

5. I smile at other people in the gym. You’re not supposed to smile in the gym.

But a girl’s got to start somewhere.

I realised at the end of last year that as much as I enjoy eating lard and staying completely still for days at a time, I have to start doing some exercise. The sofa will feel all the softer and the Cadbury’s Boosts will taste all the sweeter if I have actually bothered to move at some point during the day.

I’ve taken baby steps to ease myself in; I started off in the pool where I know exactly what I’m doing (spluttering my way up and down until my arms feel like they’re going to come off) and then slowly but surely into the actual gym bit where all the scary bikes, treadmills and weights live.

One thing I’m delighted to discover is that – despite my excellently coordinated attire – absolutely nobody looks at me at all. I had feared that my trips to the gym would simply provide free physical comedy for all the other members to watch. I imagined one lifting a toned hand from their exercise bike to point at me whilst I floundered on the cross trainer, whilst the other switched the video camera they’d attached to their sweatband on to score £250 from You’ve Been Framed when I inevitably fell off into a pool of my own sweat. But it’s not like that at all. And I haven’t fallen off anything…yet. *touches every piece of wood in the house*

As is usually the case, the only person who gives a damn what I look like is me, and even I’m losing interest. Now that I’m actually going with a view to getting fit, rather than just because they have hair straighteners in the changing room, looking bad is the least of my worries; I’m just trying to survive without perspiring my way into hospital.

And though it’s very early days, I do feel better for it, partly because of the exercise I’m doing, and partly because I no longer feel guilty for spending my entire life sitting down. This is progress my friends, so let’s see how long it lasts.

And, don’t worry, I’m not going to try and tell you to do the same thing. Chances are you already do exercise regularly like a good human being and despise people like me who only take it up because it’s January. Or otherwise you dodge it altogether in favour of the settee and a box set, in which case, I’ll see you in the spring.

You shall not pass! Why the toilet door stays closed

14/07/2013 by Charlotte Leave a Comment

There isn’t much we haven’t seen each other do.

He’s seen me fall face first into a dinghy.

I’ve seen him take the world’s longest tumble over a suitcase.

He’s seen me choke on blackcurrant squash ’til it came out my nose.

I’ve seen him drink so much whiskey he couldn’t find our bedroom.

He’s seen me learn the hard way that one must put sun cream on all four of one’s cheeks.

I’ve seen him find out that “Wash at 30 degrees” labels are not to be ignored.

There isn’t much we haven’t been witness to in the last eight years. That’s what being in a relationship means – signing up to be the one that gets to see (and laugh at) every single act.

Except one.

Going to the toilet, using the ladies, popping to the little boys’ room, relieving oneself of all that cordial… whatever you want to call it, we do it alone.

In this house, the bathroom door must be respected. Sure, he can wander in and grab his toothbrush when I’m washing my face, and I can interrupt his morning shower to remind him to please put the bin out, but if there’s anything else happening, we steer well clear.

But why be so prudish about something as basic as a little excretion? CHILL OUT GUYS, everybody wees, you might say.

Well yes they do, but that doesn’t mean it requires an audience. If a man uses the loo and there’s nobody there to hear it, does the flush still make a sound? I’m happy to take his word for it.

After this many years together it can be hard to maintain any illusion. We’re not the people we said we were on Date One and we’ve had to come to terms with that; he doesn’t really like Coldplay, he just said that to reel me in, and I don’t like football, I just meant that I would watch David Beckham games. He knows now that women’s legs aren’t permanently smooth (or smooth at all between October and March) and I realise that living with a man who goes to the gym has its sweaty, pungent downsides. But – if nothing else – at least we have spared each other the sight of what we look like when we empty our bodies of waste.

There’s not much privacy in a long term relationship – Why are you shaving like that? Are you sure your phone is charged? What are you doing sitting down when the bin is still overflowing? – so bathroom time is pretty much all we’ve got left.

Like so many things, I guess you just have to find what works for you, whether it’s an open door policy or the threat of divorce if you’re ever caught with your trousers down.

Either way, I recommend making sure you agree on this one. Otherwise, if you need the toilet as frequently as I do, you’ll find that you’re arguing about every 20 minutes.

And that’s just unhealthy.