Sara Vali's blog

New home

I live here now: http://thismanykittens.wordpress.com

I set it up ages ago and forgot and now I'm going to have to make a proper go of it. STUPID VOX. On the plus side, I might actually start blogging again.

Easiest £20 I ever made

Carly clearly bumped our tip to the top of the queue. If you buy this week's Love It! and turn to page 29, you will see this:

Loveitcakesvox

Unbelievably, Carly didn't use 'I FOUND YOUR PORN'. Even more unbelievably, she awarded the star tip to a woman who suggested gluing some pink feathers to a cheap hat.

Now we just need to wait at least six weeks for our cheque, and we can take our slandered boyfriends out for a meal of £20 or less. Subway here we come!

 

 

OMG

Remember this? Of course you do. You've been thinking about nothing else. Anyway, earlier tonight I had a text from Mittens which began "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD". The reason for this excitement? Behold:

Thank you for sending in your tip – I am hoping to use it in a future issue so please do not send it to any other magazines and let me know if you have already done so. 

If your tip is approved it should appear in the magazine over the next few months. Once printed you will receive a cheque at least six weeks after publication.

Best wishes

Carly Hobbs

Acting Deputy Features Editor 

Love it!

You guys: I am living the dream.

Come and literally dine with me

Some months ago, Kate and I were inspired by the tellybox and decided to do our own version of Come Dine With Me. In case you’ve been living in a cave or are one of those smug ‘oh, we only have a television for BBC4 documentaries about grain’ types, Come Dine With Me features five strangers hosting a dinner party for each other over the course of a week. The diners mark their host out of ten and the winner gets £1000 and the relief of never having to see the four other contestants again. It is a simple concept made amazing by watching how a group of strangers get on – or don’t - and by the fact that the winner isn’t easy to predict. You could buy the most expensive cuts of meat, design an elaborate amuse bouche, make everyone a personalised cocktail and have Cirque Du Soleil doing the after-dinner entertainment, only to be upstaged by someone who’s done vanilla ice-cream with jam and Maltesers for pudding simply because everyone likes her more than you.

 

Kate was first to cook back in September, and set the standard high with her Liberace meat bouquet. Here is my menu, subtitled ‘look how fucking ethnic I am! Have I mentioned I’m mixed race? Have I? HAVE I??’:

 

*** Starter ***

Rasam with vadai (spicy tomato soup with lentil doughnuts)

 

*** Main ***

Chickpea curry with basmati rice, Bombay potatoes and naan

 

*** Dessert ***

Vanilla ice* with raspberries

 

*** Entertainment ***

TBA, but will probably involve lolling about on the sofa drinking amaretto. Maybe some SingStar 80s too.

 

* not the rapper.

 

I took Friday off work to start cooking, and it was just as well I did because everything went wrong. You know when you see a CDWM contestant looking despairingly at their fifth burnt pavlova, wailing ‘I’ve done this a thousand times and this has NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE!” – well, that was me. Only replace ‘pavlova’ with ‘soup’, ‘vanilla sorbet’, ‘chickpea curry’ and ‘soup’ again. The original soup recipe called for 100g of tamarind, a sour, fruity paste usually only used sparingly. I added half of this and my soup quickly went from ‘delicious’ to ‘ruined’. Then the food processor refused to process food, and screaming at it mysteriously failed to fix it. The curry looked a bit…odd.

 

I replaced the starter with a tomato and cumin soup and texted Kate to let her know. She replied promising she wouldn’t hide in the bedroom, muttering about changes to the menu, although when I told her I hadn’t made my own naan bread she furiously texted that she’d have to bring her own sandwiches at this rate. I made a mental note to knock her score down from a generous 11 out of 10 at the first opportunity.

 

And the night itself? It was fine, although I was oddly nervous and there was a delay of half an hour between the starter and the main (which I pretended was deliberate to allow for important soup digestion). I was delighted I’d bought a tablecloth, which covered the mysterious stains on the table and made everything more twee. I was also delighted to have a bottle of amaretto in the kitchen. Everyone ate everything, no-one asked why there was coriander in every single dish (answer: because it is the king of herbs), I didn’t tip food on anyone or run out of clean plates. The vanilla ice was a palpable hit (recipe here ) and no-one asked annoying CDWM questions like ‘is it locally sourced?’ (yes, Somerfield is a mere five minutes away) or ‘are the tomatoes organic?’ (are they fuck).

 

After-dinner entertainment became ‘watching puppycam while sat on the sofa in a carbohydrate/wine-induced daze.’ Look at the puppies playing! Look at them sleeping in a big doggy pile! Aw, look at that one chewing on a toy and falling over his big puppy paws! Look at that one…doing a poo. Oh. And look at all the others running over…and eating it. Oh. Oh dear. Kate and Ian suddenly had to get their bus home after that.

2 girls 1 cake (ok, 11 cakes)

Last night, Mittens came round to make cakes. Not just any cakes: cakes that relay a message, often one too delicate to convey verbally. Some are passive-aggressive, some are shocking, all are delicious. There was a reason for this baking frenzy but first, observe:

cakes!

Mittens will be presenting this one to her boyfriend (note the excellent artwork, all done with writing icing):

passive-aggressive cake

I am particularly proud of what will come to be known as my Love It trilogy:

inspired by Love It stories

We chose a photo of the most Love It-friendly ones (i.e. no mentions of accidental pregnancies, porn or blisters 'down below') and emailed it to the Top Tips page with the following message:

Our boyfriends never listen to a word we say, but icing the information onto cakes gets the message across sweetly! They love our delicious baking and it helps them remember to put the toilet seat down.

If that's not £60 in the bloody bag, I don't know what is.

Notes on turning 30

I have been 30 for one month, one week and two days. Time to assess how turning Triple X has changed me. The following things have entered my life in the last 37 days:

 

Terrible hangovers. Well, only one, but it was completely undeserved because prosecco + Chambord tastes like a lovely refreshing glass of lemonade, not a lethally strong cocktail. How could something so beautiful – reader, it had a raspberry delicately floating on its bubbles – do such damage? Salt and vinegar crisps and Coke barely touched my pain the following day. A full prescription of pizza, nap, and a brisk walk in the park was needed before I felt halfway human (i.e. well enough to lie down calling for tea and watching Glee).

 

Buying soft furnishings. The first thing I thought when I got my backdated pay this month was ‘oh good, now I can buy some cushions.’ Admittedly I have not gone for a very grown-up one. 

 

Stockpiling tinned goods. This isn’t surprising. I was genetically destined to be a food hoarder, as both my grandmothers had a deep and abiding fear of being hungry. My mum thinks the Irish Potato Famine is encoded in my DNA. I remember my paternal grandma being late for a flight because she spent over an hour eating her breakfast. It took me, my mum and the taxi driver who was waiting to take us to Heathrow to get her out of the house. ‘They don’t give you anything to eat on the plane!’ she wailed. The flight was 50 minutes and she had a bagful of sandwiches. This fear has clearly passed to me because I have many cans of chickpeas, tomatoes, kidney beans and more at home. And a tin of condensed milk, bought in a supermarket strip-lighting induced daze. Condensed milk! I suspect it will become a Shelf Classic, destined to gather dust and never grace the dinner table.

 

Accidental shoplifting. I stole a carton of cranberry juice from Somerfield. I had it under my arm because it didn’t fit in the basket, and I simply walked through the checkouts with it. I would like to say I felt a sense of shame but truly, I have never felt more alive. The man behind me in thequeue, perhaps influenced by me, stole a bottle of wine in a similar fashion. I may have started a mini south London based crime spree.

MINI MEN DOUBLE SPREAD LEFT ME COLD

Knowing my fascination with Love It!’s fascination with midget porn (look at the cover photo on its Wikipedia page: DWARF HUBBY LEFT ME SHORT. Love It! loves scandalous short men), Jef kindly bought me the latest copy because of the promising headline ‘Mini men make the best lovers’. Maybe I should write the rest of this like a Love It! article, adding as much sexual innuendo as possible and highlighting important bits in yellow so those of you pressed for time or not too gud at reeding can still take it in.

Jef, 30,  smiled at me as he walked through the front door. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ he purred suggestively. ‘It’s big and shiny and I thought you might enjoy it in the bath later.’ Plunging his hand into his massive bag, he pulled out this week’s Love It! 

‘Thank you!’ I squealed excitedly, planting a kiss on his manly face before skimming my hands over my generous cleavage and running into the kitchen to make his dinner.

Oh god. I can’t do it. I nearly applied for a job with them once and I’m glad I didn’t, because just typing that made me throw up a little bit.

Anyway. I obviously skipped straight to the tiny men double-page spread, only to find that it wasn’t about midgets, it was about men who are shorter than average who – gasp! – somehow still manage to have sex with ladies. As well as the obligatory Sophie Dahl / Jamie Cullum reference, it featured three unconvincing case studies and some ludicrous photos. I was unimpressed. Jef, unencumbered as he is by superfluous height, was unimpressed. Our unimpressedness: let me show you it.

This man isn’t short. This man is far away.

he's five paces behind her, she's wearing heels.

"These are small. Those over there are FAR AWAY."

(Sorry for the blurry photo. Hopefully I’ve made up for it with a Father Ted picture. Love It! needs lessons in perspective.)

Jemma, 22,  says: ‘Little guys are better lovers...They’re more feisty than tall guys and they’ve always satisfied me between the sheets. I find tall, handsome guys are often arrogant and cocky. Short guys pay you more attention to win you over with their personality.’ Jemma, 22, loves nothing more than making sweeping generalisations. Her stupid boyfriend – sorry, her ‘runt-sized Romeo’ – agrees: ‘I love being a shorty and I make up for my height in personality.’

How is this nonsense acceptable? The man is 5’6 which is (a) not particularly short and (b) not something you need to ‘make up for’. You need to make up for having incurable body odour or a massive tattoo of your ex’s face or a lengthy criminal record for arson.You don’t need to make up for a genetic disposition that has no bearing on who you are.  And is it only me who just doesn’t notice how tall or short someone is? This could be because I have a fairly warped self-image and believe myself to be tall. I was one of the tallest in my class at school until I was about 12, and that image has stuck. I sort of know all my friends are taller than me but somehow put this down to a trick of the light.

Anyway, I’ve gone off message. I was just disappointed that the promise of dwarf orgies turned out to be ‘there is a four-inch height difference between these people but somehow they’ve managed to forge a life together.’

Having said all that, obviously I’m only with Jef so I can cram his head into my chest:

 

"he was the perfect height for my boobs!"

reprazenting all the asians in da house

So at work on Tuesday we had an email sent round from Brand Services, the people who usually just ring me up about the leaflets I write and whine that I’m not writing in the new brand voice, and could I just change every ‘you’ to ‘we’ to make it sound more inclusive? Hmm? Could I? And I point out that that’s nigh-on impossible with the stuff we produce and they sigh and change it themselves and send it back to me as an ungrammatical mess.

 

Anyway, this email was different. It said they were looking for “ethnic” older people to photograph for the new website and information range. (“Ethnic”. Really. I wanted to reply saying “I suppose you mean ‘ethnic minority’, hmm, you fucking illiterates?”)

 

ANYWAY. It so happens that my dad is an older ethnic type, so I volunteered him. They were delighted. Would he mind meeting them in Ealing, they inquired, or would it be easier to pop round to photograph him at home? I checked and he was happy to meet them anywhere local. Brilliant. All set.

 

It turns out they want to meet him in a care home. I thought this was hilarious. Not just any care home, but one down the road that I’ve been telling him I was going to send him to since I was five. I’ve told him to pick a room while he’s there. Even better, take a suitcase and just quietly move in. He was unimpressed. He also asked me if he should be smart or scruffy for his shoot? Did they, he wondered, want him to look like a stereotypical old man? He’s such an ageist. I told him to dress smartly and NOT, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, to cut his own hair again. He informed me I was too late.

 

As I type, his photoshoot is underway. It’s 11am-3pm, presumably three hours in make-up and one hour telling him to “smile with [his] eyes” and “be more fierce”, Tyra Banks style. I am writing a leaflet about care homes and hope against hope that he will be on the cover.

What’s he building up there?

An update on Ceiling Squirrel. Sadly, my Chat: It’s Fate! inspired psychic communication with Ceiling Squirrel didn’t work. If anything, it made him bolder and he seems to have moved some friends in, all of whom are engaged in a complicated digging procedure throughout the roof of the flat. Their preferred hours are 7-9am and 8pm-midnight, with occasional overtime in the afternoons. I’ve tried psychically explaining that this flouts existing construction regulations and he could be hit with a £20,000 fine, but Ceiling Squirrel just don’t give a fuck.

 

Or perhaps his frantic activity is because he knows his days are numbered. I contacted the estate agent (and emphasised that damage was being done, because I knew that ‘I can’t sleep and he’s freaking me out and my friend said maybe it's a poltergeist?’ wouldn’t make them come running). He’s coming over today with someone from Pest Control to, as he grimly said, ‘find out exactly what’s up there.’ He asked me what animal it was (Ceiling Squirrel’s name is misleading as his exact genus is yet to be determined) and I said it was bigger than a rodent, didn’t make any noise, so was probably a squirrel. I refrained from offering my other theories: (1) a massive rat or (2) a small mute dog.

 

I’m now waiting for a phone call to let me know how it went. Hopefully Ceiling Squirrel hasn’t mauled them, but I doubt he’ll go quietly. I fear for what will happen next – presumably they’ve left either poison or traps up there. Either way, soon I’ll have the death throes of an animal echoing through my flat.

 

I’m sorry, Ceiling Squirrel. But you really were a fucking bastard.

Merry Christmas, bitches

I'll send you on your festive way with a top Christmas tip courtesy of Take a Break:

one of the top tips of 2009, apparently

You might need to read it a few times for the full horror to sink in. She's sewn bows to them, and snowman's faces. Oh Cathy. You could have just popped to BHS.

To wash that out of your brains, here's a lovely Christmas song from Slow Club. Have a good one, everyone.

Slow Club - Christmas TV