Stretch, corduroy and jumpsuit are 3 words that just shouldn?t appear together, at least not in 2003. But there it is in the Victorias Secret catalog, a stretch corduroy jumpsuit, priced at $78 and available in ?chocolate?.

I often wonder why corduroy seems to come back year after year. It?s designed for professors who smoke pipes and wear tan jackets with patches on the elbows. It turns everyone else into an elephant. And what?s the deal with velour? When did velour tracksuits become a celebrity fashion item costing $200 and why would 20 year olds need to feel comfortable?

I may have thought velour was cool when we were in middle school, but it disappeared from the fashion world for a very good reason — it?s unflattering, clings to all the wrong places and only seems to come in purple or pink. Leave it to the mums-to-be.

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In 25 days I?ll be 38. This is of course quite ridiculous and entirely unfair.

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I never understood that whole addicted to painkillers thing. I only really heard about it when I first moved here and I couldn?t really imagine that it referred to your standard Walgreen stuff. How could you get any kind of high from those? And wouldn?t alcohol mixed with ibuprofen just prevent a morning hangover, rather than kill you?

Prescription painkillers, big dummy. I first got to try them when I had my wisdom teeth out. I was prescribed with Vicodin, which I?d heard of and thought would be pretty cool but really it just made me a bit disoriented and stupid. Plus I slept a lot but I?ve never really needed any help with that. But since injuring my back, I?ve discovered a whole new level of painkiller.

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Yesterday I drove 4.5 hours to see some dogs. 44 of them in fact. The Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch in Medina Texas is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It reminded me of home, had I been brought up on a large ranch in a deep green valley.

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Today it?s cold, damp, dark and miserable outside. And I’m at least three of those things. What makes this kind of weather worse is people?s need to talk to me about it. ?So?, they?ll say cheerfully as the temperature drops below 30 degrees, ?this must remind you of home?. As if it?s somehow a good thing that one of the very things I hated about England has now followed me here to Texas.

Yes it does remind me. It reminds me of 33 years of my life, just not in a good way. I don?t carry some kind of cold crappy weather gene that makes me happily think of good ol’ blighty each time I have to bundle up in layers and gloves or get soaked in a thunderstorm.

I love sun, heat, blue skies and air conditioning.That?s why I came here three years ago and stayed. Texas is supposed to be toasty, a bit on the parched side, a bit prickly pear. They weren?t wearing rain ponchos during the seige of the Alamo. Travis? line in the sand wasn?t washed away in an unexpected downpour. And I haven?t been dancing naked in my backyard, recently. So if you?re loving this weather, keep it to yourself. I prefer Texas when it?s hot as a monkey?s bum, your Majesty.

Went to see the movie Thirteen, the story of Tracy, a straight-A student in 7th grade who turns from a good girl that still has stuffed animals on her bed into an uncontrollable teen monster, after she starts hanging out with ultra bad girl Evie. Shoplifting, drugs, drinking, casual sex and self-mutilation all follow.

I like to think that my own life at that age parallels Tracy?s and so here, based on some of the movie?s central themes is another compelling tale of life at age thirteen.

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I thought yeah, I’ll have toast.
There’s brown bread, white bread,
all sorts of wholemeal bread;
It comes in funny packages
with writing on the side.
I?ll have toast, a little bit of toast.

Toast by Streetband. Released 1978

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David Blaine, illusionist, man-in-perspex box and utter masochist. Spending 40 days in a box with water as your only sustenance would seem bad enough. But doing it while suspended over the Thames in London is just asking for trouble.

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Since giving up eating meat but still eating fish, I’ve been trying to figure out what I am in food terms. I’ve decided on fishetarian — I saw it in a magazine last week and decided to adopt it as my own invention. It’s quite suprising really (liking fish, not plagiarism) as I hated it as a child. My parents were friendly with a river-owning farmer who would swing by on the weekend to deliver a big stinky scaly fish gift. I still remember seeing them laid out in the kitchen on old newspaper, big bulging eyes signalling that their moment of realization had come just too late. I actually envied friends whose parents served those oh so handy ‘boil-in-the-bag’ single servings of cod in white sauce, which I later lived on as a student.

Anyway, said farmer, who I suspect may actually have been a poacher, would also bring other delicacies such as rabbits and pheasants, the latter of which would come complete with all their feathers, which my mother never felt the need to fully extract. And I know the word is pluck, but just saying it in my head makes me feel queasy. But the real bonus? Finding a fragment of shot – gunshot – as you were trying to force down this foul (ha ha) meat. Bizarrely (even for her), my mother would say that we were lucky should we find such a thing during Sunday lunch. About as lucky as the pheasant was I suppose.

Generally I get asked 2-3 times a week where I’m from. My reply usually elicits one of three responses. The first is an argument, because the person asking had already decided, and maybe even bet, that I’m Australian, or at a pinch from New Zealand. Once I was asked if I was from Austria. I’m hoping they meant Australia because I can forgive that, seeing as most Americans grasp of world geography is on a par with Europeans living in the 1400s. In some extreme cases I’m identified as South African, but that’s probably based on their misinterpretation of my saying that I was raised in a small village. Yes and my father is the tribal headshrinker.

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