Blurred clebs - Joanna Lumley

Joanna Lumley
Originally uploaded by LizzieCatt.

Can you see Joanna Lumley?

Is that her, in the centre, looking unusually bloke-ish in jeans and a t-shirt?

Nope.

Is that her little pink face, lurking at the left hand side of the stage curtain?

No, it is not.

See the black shadow topped with an illuminated white blob on the very left hand side of the photo?

That's her. That's Joanna Lumley. Wearing a cape, and reading the last bit of Romeo and Juliet. As you do.

Blurry clebs - Hugh and Jemima (part II)

Miserable git-face Hugh Grant
Originally uploaded by LizzieCatt.

If you look closely, you can almost see him saying "Raaah!".

She is the tall blonde blob on the right. Probably.

I think this is one of the more focused snaps in my collection.

Blurry clebs - Hugh and Jemima (part one)

Hugh and Jemima
Originally uploaded by LizzieCatt.

Hugh Grant placing a protective arm around rah beanpole girlfriend Jemima Khan.

Doherty a fake invented by the KLF?

Love this

Happy birthday to you! (and you)

Nast... yawn
Originally uploaded by LizzieCatt.

This is not a blurred celebrity, this is a picture taken in a darkened corner of myself and Mernie, whose birthday it is today. Happy birthday!

It was also Sharon's birthday the other day, happy birthday to you too missis lady!

Blurry clebs

Blazin' Squad
Originally uploaded by LizzieCatt.

Staying with the art theme, today sees the start of an online art exhibition of my own work.

Part of my job a while back involved going to events where celebrities (I use the term in its loosest sense) would be in attendance. I would then hang around, eating free food and waiting to natter with these celebrated public figures.

This sounds like it could be quite good fun and sometimes it was. Most of the time, it involved missing EastEnders to stand by the venue's kitchen door hoping the canapés would come out, then being snubbed by someone like Jodi Marsh who I didn't actually want to talk to in the first place.

As I was unable to sit on the sofa engrossed in Dot's driving mishaps or Sharon and Mini-Den's spats about whether or not to settle in Walford (don't do it, Mini-Den! Oh, too late), I had to make my own fun. So, as I loitered in the esteemed company of our nations finest soap stars and pop acts I attempted to capture candid shots on my bag-scuffed, blurry, fish-eyed phone camera.

And now I would like to share these works with you.

Ladies and gentlemen, the first in my collection. I call it "Blazin' Squad (backstage at the Big Gay Out)".

Blinded by the light

On Sunday, Drew (don't bother clicking through, I'm sure he hasn't posted recently) and I are off to the Hayward to see the Dan Flavin retrospective. Well, that's if he doesn't blow me out and go to Horse Meat Disco or something.

Sunday, of course, is the last day of the Dan Flavin retrospective. I have been meaning to go since it opened but never quite managed to. At one point, I nearly went even though there were only 25 minutes left before closing because I'm so terrified I'm going to miss it. I'm pretty certain, even though I've called to check, that when we turn up on Sunday there will be nothing but an empty gallery and blokes in brown coats carting lifeless neon tubes into a waiting lorry.



I went to see a tiny Dan Flavin exhibit at some poncy gallery off the Tottenham Court Road last year. I don't know what possessed me really, I think I saw an article about it on Londonist and forced myself to get out of bed, step away from the O.C. and gaze lovingly at light tubes. I like light, you see. I have been accused of being 'a bit funny about light'. This is grossly unfair, I just don't like sitting under a naked 100 watt glare when I could be bathing in the glow of a soothing 60 watt peach bulb, muted and cosseted by a heavy cream shade, while friendly opaque yellow fairy lights illuminate one corner, a string of mini purple lamps another and the ceiling basks in the twinkling reflection of a chain of fluffy stars while a mini multi-coloured disco ball rotates cheerily under the bed. Oh fine, I'm a bit funny about light. But you should met my sister, man. She can name a bulb at 100 meters. She's MAD.

So, yes. Dan Flavin. Liked it. LOVED it, actually. Got dragged out of the gallery by my hair, crying and clinging onto a complex geometric form. I don't 'do' galleries, but if I miss this, I will have to burn my eyes out with a fluro tube. I wonder if it has anything to do with obsessively rewatching Star Wars as a child?

Whoppers

I'm only 29, yet it seems somebody has already penned an unauthorised biography.



The blurb reads: Lizzie Learns about Lying Lizzie the lizard tells whopper after whopper. When Happy hawk ends up in the lake, Lizzie learns the truth about lying.

Yeah, lying is funny and hawks are stoopid.

Pete Doherty - arrested - car

Annabel thought she saw a smacked-up Pete Doherty driving through Hoxton this morning, and emailed me to see if I knew (perched, as I am atop the pumping heart of our nation's news media) what make of vehicle the oily little spot-farm drug-drives to his dealer's in.

I entered 'Pete Doherty - arrested - car' into our library system at work. Imagine my surprise when nothing appeared! Could the moon-faced wastrel really have managed to keep his nose (and crack pipe) clean for a whole month? Could he finally have taken a look in the mirror and decided to invest the cash he earned flogging stuff he stole from his bandmate's flat in some Clearasil, Head & Shoulders and a few barrels of Touche Eclat? You could get a year's worth of dirty washing to the laundrette in just one of those eyebags.

No, turns out I spelled his name wrong. There have been 17 articles mentioning the words Pete Doherty, arrested and car in the last month. That's more like it.

Drew in an elevator

Drew in an elevator
Originally uploaded by LizzieCatt.

Every time I go to put this picture up, the computer crashes. I'm not sure why, look how cute Drew is! How mischievous! See how he drinks Champagne like a fun person!

And I'm sure I've posted it before, but I can't find it on the blog - could it have escaped from the archives and be running wild through the untamed planes of the interweb?

BTW, he isn't actually in an elevator, I am. But 'Drew from an elevator' isn't as snappy, really, is it.

Me, him and Camilla Barker Bowles

£350
Originally uploaded by LizzieCatt.

Saturday marked the first official event in the countdown to The Wedding of the Year - when Sharon waltzes up the aisle and into the arms of Ian.

In honour of the impending nuptials, seventeen ladies wot lunch descended on an unsuspecting London restaurant. The youngest guest was 21 and the oldest 87. Can you guess which one turned up with a garter for the blushing bride-to-be? Old people are cooool.

Before the lunch, us bridesmaids piled into a few of Oxford Street's department stores to wrestle ourselves into several potential frocks, stuff our faces with massive pastries and ponce about trying on hats.

I have, in the past, given a certain someone a bit of a hard time for expressing a desire to own a Philip Treacy hat. I must now issue a public apology, for although I maintain that any bloke mincing about in a designer titfer would look like an utter pillock and be righteously dumped/mocked, I did fall madly in love with this thing of beauty, created by the very same Philip Treacy. I'm sure it'll be on my (imaginary) hatstand soon - a snip at a mere £350.

I never thought I'd be craving the designs of someone who makes hats for Camilla Parker-Bowels.

I even went to Mr Treacy's website this morning but was quickly reminded that I have no place looking at fashion sites as I clicked through to the homepage and saw the message: "If you cannot see the Unicorn, either enter the None Flash Site or Download Flash."

Heh. Unicorn.

Bitch bitch bitch bitch

This morning, as I was trying to board the tube, I noticed a woman get up from her seat and shuffle through the throng to the doors with a big bag.

As the train pulled out of the station, I tapped her on the shoulder and said: "Excuse me, are you getting off at the next stop?"

She whirled around, fixed me with what I can only describe as a steely sneer, and said: "No, actually, I'm not."

"Oh, OK." I said. "It's just it looked like you were, and the first set of doors don't open there."

"I KNOW," she grimaced, horribly. "I get this train EVERY DAY."

And with that, she whisked back around and stuck her witchy nose into her mindless old-people's novel.

Perhaps I should mention at this point that she was painfully plain, middle-aged, had terrible scrappy, nothingy dark brown hair and was attired in a ghastly purple raincoat and matching hat that made her look like a ridiculous, past-it Ribena Berry.

It would have been infantile of me to mutter something along the lines of "Fine, I'll never help anyone again then," physically shunt her out of the way at Bank and push in front on the escalators whispering "bitch bitch bitch bitch". But I did it anyway.

And as I exited the station, a nice man working for the Hilton gave me a goody bag containing toffee popcorn, some vouchers and samples of two kinds of washing powder.

Consumerism: one

Good manners: nil

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome

It has come to my attention that there are about four more people reading this blog than I thought there were. I reckon that makes about eight of us, including me! Hiya! *waves*

So thank you for, you know, reading all the stuff, and helloooo!

UPDATE
As stupid blogger won't let me post comments on my own ruddy blog:

Good to virtually meet you Crispin and Mare, and thank you very much, blush blush! I will return linky favours as soon as I get on a PC that allows me to do so.

Spike, bots love our work. They love it.

And hello Mark! I promise I'll actually make an effort now!

Hating the dream

The problem with living the dream, as oppose to, oooh, say, working as a lazy-arse temp in a college in Wandsworth, is that it's actually quite tough sometimes. I never dared hope I'd get to do what I love to do for a living, but one day, my fairy godmothers wiggled her wand, jiggled her tiara, shimmied her bustle and... *sparkle-shimmer-POOF!*... I found myself with a fabulous job beyond any ridiculous day-dream ever dreamed during those long, lonely hours spent pretending to order stationery.

What never occurred to me in all my day dreams is that if I wanted to become, you know, good at stuff, I would have to work at it for a quite considerable amount of time. This is where fantasy wins - clearly I would rather be an undiscovered genius, a diamond in the rough, whose amazing talents would have caused flabbergasted colleagues to gossip excitedly about me in hushed whispers, possibly before breaking into some kind of all-singing, all-dancing routine entitled something like "I Think She's Got It! (We've Never Seen Anything Like It Before)".

Yeahhhh. So.

The problem with pursuing the dream is accepting the fact that most people at work with more experience are far better at the job than me. Of course, they are all lovely, helpful and patient and hopefully I will be as good as them one day. I don't know why I didn't learn my lesson in Ms Casey's class - I dreamed then of shimmying up the rope in gym, back-flipping across the playground like Maxine Poulter (bitch) and scrabbling up the apparatus to the roof of the school hall like a leotard-clad little monkey. In reality, I couldn't even make it onto the box with the aid of a springboard and dangled desperately on the end of the rope before plopping pathetically onto the plasticised foam mat half a meter below.

Of course, I didn't bother trying to be a gymnast and I'm glad, because quite frankly puberty took long e-bloody-nough to find me as it was. If I'd spent my youth hurtling madly over big planks of wood, I'd probably still be sitting here in my BhS 30AA "god chest, will you get on with it" bra.

But I want to be good at this, and I've realised that in order to totally rock and have awe-struck juniors running to save me a seat in the canteen (stop it), it is necessary to feel stupid, get it wrong, sit and watch others pull my work apart and tell me why I didn't get it quite right. It's not the greatest feeling in the world, but it makes it all the sweeter when someone says: "Well done, you did a good job on that."

"By the way, you spell storeys with an e-y."

Bugger.

This morning

Sleepy, bored and too ashamed to unfurl my copy of the Daily Hate Mail (I HAVE to read it for work, OK, and I keep it rolled up with the sports page on the outside when in public) on the tube this morning, I took to reading a brochure that was perched on the lap of my temporary public transport neighbour.

She was a pretty lady with fabulous earrings and all her make-up on before she'd even got to the office, which always impresses me. Personally, I leave it until I see myself reflected in the ghastly blue mirrors in the building's lifts and if it's so bad I can't bear the thought of people looking at me at thinking - ew, pasty - all day, I might smear a bit of foundation and eyeshadow on at about 12.15pm.

Anyway, this young go-getter was reading an executive report about business opportunities in West London. Using the covert diagonal stare required for tube reading material piracy (hurts the eyes, easier to just bring a book really), I joined in on a paragraph about the economy of the area.

"Employment saturation is high in the transport and communications industries," the report instructed me.

"This is enabled by the sub-region's extensive transport links and aided by the presence of Heathrow airport."

Why do people need to use language like that? What a load of absolute drivel and tosh. Aided by the presence of Heathrow airport? Extensive transport links? FFS. What I believe they meant to say was:

"There are lots of tube drivers, bus drivers, ticket inspectors, call centre workers, mobile phone salesmen and trolley dollies in West London.

"This is because the area is carved up by the pollution-pumping Chertsey Road and god-awful North Circular, cursed by the ancient, terminally confused District line and the maddeningly badly-connected Piccadilly line, and constantly scattered with blue ice, frozen illegal immigrants and toxic fumes which tumble from the toilets, wheel housings and engines of the roaring jets that skim endlessly over the chimney stacks."

It upset me that the well-groomed lady was nosing into all that nonsense. Clearly I was not distressed enough whip out my hate-rag of shame and read about how smiling gives working mothers ovarian cancer, but still. I wish people were allowed to write proper like what I do.

Oh, oh no.

Like Jessica at Go Fug Yourself, I too had a MASSIVE crush on Christian Slater when I was a young teenager. I had Pump Up The Volume posters on the wall and cut little faces out of mags to stick to my pinboard, the lot.*

I briefly interviewed him last year and could hardly speak, even though it was my job at the time to chat to celebs and it seemed that he was floating on a cloud of Prozac/ was a bit of a tool. Yes, he was older, rather strange, receding and a bit of a shortarse, but if he'd groped me on the street, I probably would have just giggled and blushed.
But this... this... HAT. Gah.
The dream is over.

*I have a feeling that Drew is going to totally misinterpret "stick to my pinboard"