Step away from the Xbox and put down the lipstick...

Right now I’m at home with the cat, Marla Singer, for company and I’m sitting around in mis-matched clothes contemplating making scrambled eggs and coffee for brunch, ignoring the dusting, the list of incomplete projects, the scripting/writing I should be doing and the large mouse like chunks of cat hair littering the house...and yet I feel like a domestic goddess... Why, you ask, when my house is clearly in a shambles and the How Clean Is Your House ladies would be freaking out in an OCD-like fit?

I feel like a domestic goddess because I’m wearing red lipstick.

You may be wondering if you’re reading the right blog, if some how the http links have frelled up somehow and instead of reading about writing, comics, books, cats and movies, you’ve stumbled upon some a blog about make up and domesticity... Well, you’re in the right place, I’m just feeling a little girlier than normal and I only have a book to blame.

I’ve just finished reading The Girls’ Guide To Homemaking (TG’GTH, amazing! It sounds orc-ish!) by Amy Bratley, a fiction title which is just positively endearing and not the kind of thing that I usually read at all. Tending towards fantasy and horror, I usually think I’m onto a winner if I pick up a book and there’s a map in the front. I mean seriously, if you write a fantasy title and there’s no Road to go ever on and on, or even worse no map to lead the way for both characters and reader...well, you might as well just start again or write a different genre...

**clears throat**

Sorry, distracted there. To come to the point, that’s what I usually read and every now and then I like a literary palate cleanser, something well written and girlie like Alice Hoffman or Sarah Addison Allen, or something completely trashy... I wasn’t sure where TG’GTH fell when I started reading it but quite soon I realised that it is a thing of beauty. Full of heartbreak, complicated relationships, moving house, ignoring housework, cupcakes and accidentally sleeping with the wrong people, this title raises the bar by being crafty and by that I mean it’s full of women who make things. Being a closet crafter myself (I probably have at least a hundred ongoing craft projects hidden in said closet, the spare room and under my desk) it was exhilarating to read a fiction book that shared the excitement of crafting, had craft groups and women who were making a living from making things that they themselves loved. But the icing on the cake was that a great deal of the domestic advice and craft ideas, recipes and cocktails sprinkled through out the book all came from titles published between 1951 and 1975, predominantly from the fifties. With that and a real love of vintage and retro in the story, it’s hardly surprising that the women keep donning bright red lipstick, vintage dresses and just looking wonderful.

At the end of the book, feeling uplifted by the story, the carry on carrying on attitude and the natural women making the most of what they had, I felt inspired to find the pillar box red lipstick I bought on a whim about two years ago...

And suddenly everything was all right in the world.

I may look more Robert Smith than Dita Von Teese, Tim Curry than Marilyn Monroe, but I feel like I could take on the world, whilst drinking cocktails! And best of all, everything seems suddenly more fun! It may be the two cups of coffee I’ve had, when I haven’t drunk coffee for ages; it may be listening to Nerina Pallot (the girliest music I own! And When Did I Become Such A Bitch is the best music for first thing in the morning!) VERY LOUDLY whilst dancing around the kitchen like I’m having a fit, but wearing red lipstick makes me feel like I can do what-ever I want. It makes me feel confident and gorgeous. It makes me feel like I CAN DO ANYTHING. It makes me want COCKTAILS! I know I would look amazing whilst washing up, but red lipstick makes it okay to ignore it! I am independent, I am fabulous, I am going to spend the afternoon playing Dragon Age and kicking ass!

Oh God. Red lipstick could end the world as we know it... Do they have a shade called Pandora’s Box?

Minutiae

Somebody once said that the Devil was in the details and as writers we're always looking for the little things that concrete the reality of our writing.  But how far can you go?  Where's the fine line between appropriate attention to detail and OCD?

I'm sitting in my usual coffee house, in my usual seat, by the window on the first floor, overlooking the market.  It feels like the first day of Autumn; the sky is a flat mist grey and the awnings of the market look subdued, like off-season deck chairs.  The people walking below have slumped shoulders, heavy bags, yawns splitting their faces wide open.

This all seems like appropriate attention, I'm not dwelling on a list of every bloom sold on the flower stall, or describing everything that the man sitting on the bench below is wearing...  Although I like the way he stares off into his thoughts as he struggles to zip up his jacket, a cigarette dangling between his fingers.

But the things that mesmerise me, that make me pause; the way the milk blossoms and billows through the tea when I first pour it in, like a fast growing coral, pale against a mineral brown sea...  The way one lone white feather flutters on the pavement in the breeze of everyone's footsteps...  The way that the woman on the phone behind me has perfect hair except for a couple of loose strands, standing out from her head in a half circle of gold that glints in the light...

I feel I teeter on the brink of over-description constantly, because of the tiny things that catch my eye - shiny, silver details clamouring for the magpie mind.  It would be so easy to fall into that cloud world of heat and motion in that grande Earl Grey, or to sit by the market and watch the passage of that feather as it attempts to touch the passers-by with its simple beauty.

The film of the plastic bag in "American Beauty" captivates me, I see the beauty in the disposable, the shape of the wind in that dancing plastic.

But do we get lost in those moments?  Does it take us away from ourselves for a brief respite, a reminder of the gloriousness of the overlooked, the minutiae of our lives?  Or do we lose connection with each other whilst we are absorbed in the details?

I don't know, but I love the way my tea blossoms and the dance of that feather and I wish there were more opportunity to write about these things without losing track of the bigger picture.