Does My Bum Look Big In This?

NOTE TO DAVE: DO NOT READ THIS POST IN THE LIBRARY.

I like to think there will come a time, several months from now, when I will have stopped breast-feeding, my figure will have returned to its former, er, 'glory', and I will be able to wear proper fancy French underwear again.

In anticipation of that joyous day I have spent the last hour perusing Figleaves.com, the underwear-fancier's shangri-la, in search of impossibly beautiful lingerie.

Among all the balconettes and thongs and jacquard and guipure, my eye was caught by something I'd never heard of before. Apparently you can now buy pants that 'enhance your rear profile' with 'firm foam padding'. To be specific:

This shorty by Huit is designed to enhance your rear profile by giving you sexy feminine curves. Cut in a low rise design from opaque jersey, it has firm foam padding at the full coverage rear.

I foresee a day when we will be able to dispense with every physical attribute that Nature provided for us, and concoct ourselves completely out of collagen, bacterial toxins and foam-stuffed pants. Thus arranged, we will march on the world like an army of zombie Mr Blobbys, all padded curves and blank, expressionless faces.

Later, horrified by the continued wilful appearance of blemishes, wrinkles and folds, we will develop the Physical Airbrush (TM), a device that applies Photoshop-like manipulation to what's left of our real bodies, allowing us to strip our limbs down to sticks, remove our lower ribs and replace our skin with a kind of weird shimmering gauze.

Having thus attained the very apogee of femininity, we will collapse en masse to the ground, consumed by botulinum poisoning and too weak to stand upright.

But at least our arses will look fantastic.

NHS Fails To Live Up To Expectations

The other day I had occasion to visit an NHS hospital for the first time since 1976.

(I haven't gone private or anything; I've just never been ill or injured.)

My only knowledge of NHS hospitals having come to me through newspapers and television, I was expecting it to be like a cross between Bioshock and 28 Days Later: filthy, cracked windows; floors swimming in blood; groaning, MRSA-infested patients swarming through pus-encrusted corridors, etc.

Instead, I found it to be an oasis of hygiene and efficiency: I was attended to straightaway by nice people with clean uniforms and fancy equipment, there were pleasant cafés and shops, and a general atmosphere of lightness, airiness and commodiousness.

I was most disappointed.

Still, perhaps they were hiding the zombies in the gore shed round the back.

Forty-Eight Hours Earlier

There are many sensible reasons why I should have found it difficult to get out of bed and go to work on Monday. Some of them are as follows:

1. It was cold.

2. It was dark.

3. It was raining.

4. I'd just come back from holiday.

5. The bed was nice and warm.

6. Also, there was a very attractive man in it.

7. My laptop was still broken.

8. I had a thrilling article to write about internal helpdesk systems for banks.


However, none of these things was going to prevent me from springing from the bed at 6am like a newborn gazelle and embracing the promise and joy of the first day back at work. Oh no. But I hadn't really bargained for reason number nine:


9. Fear of zombies.


I probably shouldn't have watched the first twenty minutes of 28 Days Later on Sunday evening. Then I wouldn't have spent the whole of Sunday night having terrible dreams about being chased across Turnham Green by the living dead and (as if that wasn't scary enough!) divebombed by zombie lapwings.

By the time the alarm went off I was still terrified, and refused to leave the flat before it got light, lest I be pursued along Chiswick High Road by shuffling yummy mummies and their undead tots.

Tonight I shall watch Season Two of the O.C., and pray that I don't have dreadful nightmares about being hounded by hordes of skinny comic book geeks sporting faintly subversive indie-band t-shirts.

Although, on second thoughts, that might not be so terribly bad...

Worst. Post. Ever.

And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder: One of the four beasts saying: "Come and see." And I saw. And behold, a white horse.

I live in Shepherd's Bush, but I work in Chiswick. I wouldn't *live* in Chiswick, because I have that whole reverse-snobbery thing going on: I like living near broken cashpoints, crackhead-infested Co-ops and the sort of pub that, if you ever ventured inside, you would almost certainly never come out again. Interspersed with charming little pavement cafés full of middle class, Guardian-reading, left-liberal types who like living near broken cashpoints, crackhead-infested Co-ops and the sort of pub that, if you ever ventured inside, you would almost certainly never come out again.

There's a man going round, taking names. And he decides who to free, and who to blame.

I also quite like walking. In fact I'm not happy unless I walk at least three miles a day during the week, and five each on Saturdays and Sundays. Lately I've started to think of it as good training for the apocalypse, which I understand is due in 2012* - about the same time as the "London" Games and the second series of Green Wing.

Everybody won't be treated all the same. There'll be a golden ladder reaching down. When the man comes around.

So it's lucky that my cosy, centrally-heated office is almost exactly a mile and half from my cosy, centrally-heated flat. It's a great walk, and I go to work quite early, so it's also largely unimpeded by the things that irritate my fellow urban bloggers: dog-walkers, bus-stop-gatherers, mobile-phone-talkers, diminutive umbrella-wielders, expansive smokers, pimped-up double-decker buggies transporting squalling infants, and so on.

The hairs on your arm will stand up. At the terror in each sip and in each sup. For you partake of that last offered cup, Or disappear into the potter's ground. When the man comes around.

And I get to listen to my iPod as I pick my way around the patches of desiccated vomit, wind-blown sections of the Observer, used condoms and toasted focaccia crusts that litter the pavements of W12. The music means I don't really notice the walk; the other day I fell over in the road while listening to "Safe" by Canyon Country, and I scarcely noticed that I'd cut my knee, nearly been run over *and* dropped my copy of the Financial Times. That's such a great song.

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers. One hundred million angels singing. Multitudes are marching to the big kettle drum. Voices calling, voices crying. Some are born and some are dying. It's Alpha's and Omega's Kingdom come.

But fuck me, it's cold at the moment, isn't it? And I left my gloves with some gay men on the Isle of Wight, which means the hot-cold-hot thing has wreaked merry havoc with my hands. They've gone all grey and scaly and cracked and bleeding. Which makes me think I should perhaps hold them out in front of me, arms outstretched, and teeter slowly around the place moaning and trying to bite people.

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree. The virgins are all trimming their wicks. The whirlwind is in the thorn tree. It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

Err, that's it really.

In measured hundredweight and penny pounds. When the man comes around.

I really wish I'd done the hat one now.

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts, And I looked and behold: a pale horse. And his name, that sat on him, was Death. And Hell followed with him.


* Warning: contains mild lunacy.