IS YOUR STARSIGN MAKING YOU FAT?

A few weeks ago, I wrote that, in a moment of horrified revelation, I'd realised I'd put on nearly a stone. Since then, I have been obediently following the WeightWitches instructions, and if I'm not quite out of the woods, I have at least lost enough to wriggle into the generous end of the Summer wardrobe. Success is in my sights. Or it is as long as Mr Trefusis doesn't walk off in the middle of a - what shall we call it? - free and frank discussion, leaving me mouthing like a goldfish mid sentence and grabbing furiously at some cheering chocolate. 

But is there more to this than simply a lack of willpower?  Once upon a time, I studied astrology and used to write the odd column or two for some well known magazines. After a long absence, I've revived my interest in matters horoscopic, and it got me thinking: could my starsign be making me fat? 

Actually, as a Pisces, I've definitely a reason to blame it on the zodiac: Pisces has the least willpower of anyone, and adores forbidden fruit, particularly the kind that's eleventy three thousand points at Weightwitches.

So I dusted off the text-books and did a little swotting, and I reckon the zodiac might have some helpful advice for those looking to shed a few pounds for summer, whatever their sign. So without further ado, here is the Mrs Trefusis Guide to Astro-dieting....

CANCER: June 22-July 23

Are the stars on your figure's side? Food dictates your emotions - you get moody if not fed regularly, or if denied your favourite comfort foods. But you're fit and strong and can burn off big meals if you want to.

Most likely to make you fat? PMS sends you insane with desire for chocolate and sweets every month. And watch out for emotional crises: for Cancerians nothing comforts better than cake.

Eat right: Stave off cravings: to alleviate your food/emotion thing, make sure you're getting enough B vitamins (deficiency is linked to depression). B for instance, in bananas, avocado and fish can ease PMS symptoms.

Maybe it's because I'm Cancerian? Childhood habits linger with you, so if you always had to clear your plate, or were never allowed sweets, chances are you're still obeying mummy.

LEO: July 24-Aug23

Are the stars on your figure's side? For proud Leos, thinness has nothing to do with health - it's all about looking fabulous and wrigging into designer clothes.

Most likely to make you fat? Your love of good living conflicts with your glamorous side: but you can bet your bottom dollar (or just your bottom) that Leo Jennifer Lopez had to choose between a passion for fine dining and wearing skinny jeans

Eat right: If you've overindulged, try a detoxing juice fast. Three days will have you bright-eyed and busy-tailed. Watch the fat content of your favourite foods: Leo rules the heard, so steer clear of no-carb diets that narrow your arteries as well as your hip measurements.

Maybe it's because I'm a Leo? Leos like individual attention - a personal trainer will give you the encouragement to strive for faster results

VIRGO: Aug 24-Sept23

Are the stars on your figure's side? Virgos are the health freaks of the zodiac: you're body aware and health-conscious. But you can overdo it, leaving you prone to food intolerances.

Most likely to make you fat: Virgos tend to be slim - all that nervous energy. But you can feel fat from bloating if you have food sensitivities.

Eat right: You have energy slumps - try eating little and often to even out the gaps. Food combining is an old fashioned solution which might just help if you suffer from that bloated feeling.

Maybe it's because I'm a Virgo? Your eating goes awry when you're stressed, and since you're the worry monster of the zodiac, this can be often. And of course, for you, the devil's in the detail - if you suspect you might have allergies, keep a food diary.

LIBRA: Sept24-Oct23

Are the star's on your figure's side? Librans like to look beautiful in a shapely, womanly way. Just as well, as you have a sweet tooth and a reputation for laziness.

Most likely to make you fat? Just about everything. But you are the best-looking sign, even if you are bone idle - you'd take liposuction over gym sessions any day. You're also brilliant at persuading yourself that struggling into a pair of Spanx is easily as effective as working out with one of those power bands.

Eating right: You like to look good in clothes, and this may necessitate some sacrifices. be a food puritan: if it's fattening, just don't buy it, because like your fellow Libran, Oscar Wilde, you can resist anything except temptation

Maybe it's because I'm a Libran? Libra is, of course, the sign of the scales - try for a balance. If you overdo it one day, cut back the next.

SCORPIO Oct 24-Nov 23

Are the stars on your figure's side? You have plenty of willpower, though you can keep it hidden. You either treat your body as a temple, or abuse it mercilessly.

Most likely to make you fat? You've got self-control, but you think moderation is for wimps - so you go for a big blowout just because you can. You also love hot, spicy food, and red Thai curries are hardly lo-cal.

Eat right: Flush out toxins: eat cleansing foods like stewed apple and drink lots of water. Try a detox fast once in a while, and colonic irrigation may be useful.

Maybe it's because I'm a Scorpio? Go for challenging exercise, like distance running - as the most intense sign, you'll push it to extremes. An ulterior motive also works for Scorpio motivation: remember that the running club is often full of tasty blokes.

SAGITTARIUS Nov 23-Dec 21

Are the stars on your figure's side? Sagittarius rules the hips and thighs - all you consume may go straight to the bottom line. You do overindulge, but on the plus sign, Sagittarius is the most naturally sporty of all the signs.

Most likely to make you fat? The party lifestyle gets Sagittarians every time - you're the bon vivant of the zodiac. Um, how many units did you drink this evening?

Eat right: Watch portion size. Jupiter, your ruling planet, likes nothing so much as a plate heaped with food, so avoid the 'all you can eat buffet' like the plague.

Maybe it's because I'm a Sagittarian? Your sign rules foreign things and adores the exotic. Swot up on the calories in a Tikka Masala before nipping down the 'Taj Mahal' on a Friday night. 

CAPRICORN Dec 22-Jan 20

Are the stars on your figure's side? You've got serious self-control on the one hand, but the ability to be horribly self-critical on the other. Somehow, slim is never slim enough. Don't let yourself be undermined by your own high standards.

Most likely to make you fat? You're a very traditional eater: meat with potatoes, followed by a proper pudding. And you do love pudding.

Eat right: Be strict. You have appearances to keep up and your ruler, Saturn, give you restraint. If you're a workaholic Capricorn, and many are, plan ahead and make a healthy sandwich to bring from home for lunchtime so you don't ever have to leave your desk.

Is it because I'm a Capricorn? Capricorn rules the skeleton, so don't forget to keep your calcium intake high with low-fat dairy. According to the latest research, dairy products also help keep the weight off too.

Aquarius Jan 21-Feb 19

Are the stars on your figures side? Aquarians have a reputation for being interested in food first and foremost as fuel, and get geeky about nutrition. But even Aquarians find protein shakes with a wheatgrass chaser fail to hit the spot. And then it all goes to pot.

Most likely to make you fat? Yo-yo dieting is the Aquarian curse: you find fad diets irresistible - you name it, you've tried it, from Alli to Atkins. And when the pounds pile on again, you're on Amazon, scoping out the latest bestseller.

Eat right: Use your inquisitiveness to educate yourself about food and nutrition, so you can make more of an informed decision about what the diet books are selling you.

Is it because I'm an Aquarian? Sometimes you just think food is irrelevant: in the Aquarian vision of the future, we'll all be eating pills instead. But in the real world, remember that you have the self-control of a Capricorn and the willpower of a Scorpio: yes, one day you will make it from pig to twig.

Pisces Feb 20-March 20

Are the stars on your figure's side? Poor Pisces - you're the sign for whom the phrase 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions' was invented. You get it both ways - you're ruled by Jupiter, so you share Sagittarians love of giving it large, and by Neptune, so you also quite like to use food and drink in an, ahem, medicinal capacity. Three martinis to the wind and it's your canape hell.

Most likely to make you fat? You hate to hurt people's feelings by saying 'no'. Stop it- people will still like you if you refuse a second helping, or admit you're on a diet.

Eat right: You don't have an inbuilt 'stop' mechanism. If you ate til you felt full, you'd never leave the table. Set yourself limits.

Is it because I'm a Piscean? Most Pisceans use the excuse that trainers are too ugly to avoid getting into gym kit. True, but running in kitten heels is very dangerous.

Aries March 21-April 20

Are the stars on your figure's side? Lucky you. You're energetic, always on the go. Food is fuel to burn off as you rush through the day. What's more, your sign likes exercise, even if you don't. And you also tend to get quick results. Most gratifying.

Most likely to make you fat? You can be tempted by fast food, mainly because you have a temper tantrum if you don't eat the minute you realise you're hungry. Your idea of a well-stocked kitchen is one with a selection of takeaway menus.

Eat right: You need carbs to keep your energy high, and to stop yourself being ambushed by hunger. MacDonalds is not the answer.

Is it because I'm an Aries? Aries likes their exercise action packed, fast, furious and challenging, so if you're feeling bored by pilates and frustrated by yoga, try kick-boxing instead. You're also very goal oriented, so diets work best when you set yourself deadlines like x number of pounds by x date.

Taurus April 21-May 21

Are the stars on your figure's side? You only have to look at spaghetti carbonara on a menu for it to show on the scales. The stars gave you an appreciation of good food, fine wine and nice restaurants and your idea of exercise is walking to the car. Oops.

Most likely to make you fat? Feeling like you deserve a treat. But don't reward progress with food: take yourself shopping for beautiful clothes instead.

Eat right: You do have willpower, and that legendary Taurean stubbornness simply means that you have the kind of tenacity to keep a diet going even when you've plateau'd. You also like routine, so planning your week's menus and shopping accordingly can save you masses of calories.

Is it because I'm a Taurus? Taurus is a sign that loves sensual pleasures, but being the gourmet of the zodiac isn't good for the waistline. Nor does the fact that you like the comfort of feeling full. Soup is your very best friend. Pints of it will work miracles (without cream, silly)

Gemini May 22-June 21

Are the stars on your figure's side? Geminis live on nervous energy and prefer fresh, simple food to gourmet blowouts, which helps to keep a trim waistline. Maybe it's because you're so easily distracted that you often find something more interesting to do than finish a meal.

Most likely to make you fat? If you're portly, could it be that you're a bit too fond of the local Tapas bar? Geminis love meals that comprise of lots of little dishes but you need to be careful with your choices. Go in search of a Bento Box instead.

Eat right: Eat little and often. You need frequent feeding to keep you going. It's not just the boredom factor that puts you off a banquet, it's the way big meals bloat you out. Finger foods and canapes offer the kind of variety you find fascinating, but don't forget that food eaten standing up still counts.

Is it because I'm a Gemini? You get bored of diets and revert to your bad old ways before you can say ennui. And you're an incorrigible snacker. Are crudite's the answer? 

FAT IS AN ECONOMIC ISSUE

Months of misery eating and drowning of sorrows have taken their toll. I have eaten enough chocolate to recession-proof Sir Hans Sloane and Cadbury - the latter offers rather better consolation. As in fiction, so in chocolate: Jilly Cooper is a guilty pleasure in a way that Proust could never be, and Galaxy will always comfort where Willie Harcourt-Cooze 's tiny dark blocks of Venezuelan 100% cacao can only exhaust one with its self-conscious artisanal craftsmanship. There's no wanton hedonism in something that could be considered improving - I want chocolate to have the potency of cheap music, and the anaesthetising effect of soma.

And it's not just the chocolate: as bad news hit at work - whether of redundancies or just the daily grind of doing more with less or hunting around in search of business with all the efficacy of a badly trained truffle pig - I hit the bottle. Not - I hasten to add - in an inelegant, or health-threatening way, although a piece in the newspaper on middle class binge drinking gave me cause to count units and flinch - but in the way that nothing feels really quite so ghastly after a couple of cocktails or a nice bottle of wine.

But of course, all good things must come to an end. One must always take the consequences of one's errant behaviour. And so, mid-May, as I found myself struggling to get into my summer wardrobe, I swept the dust off from the scales only to discover with horror that I've put on nearly a stone since Christmas. The anguish! The recriminations! The self-berating!

Nothing for it: what looks fabulous on Mad Men's Joan, only serves to shatter my amour-propre. And so it was that I marched straight to WeightWitches, to begin my penance for my season of indulgence.

Yet, as I was on my way back to the office, in possession of a points counter and stalwart determination, into the inbox of the Blackberry pinged an email link from the Guardian- a fascinating and salutory interview with 'Bodies' author, Susie Orbach, forwarded by my clever and beautiful friend Sarah Churchwell.

Orbach is most famous for 'Fat is a Feminist Issue' which, as Aitkenhead writes is 'a ground breaking work, the thesis of which was so simple that no one who read it could dispute its logic...diets make us fat by distorting our relationship with food'. More than thirty years later, Orbach asserts that we're more disconnected from our bodies than ever before: we can't get past our indoctrination by a plethora of media images that celebrates an exceptionally narrow definition of female beauty. Intellectually, we know this is wrong - the paradigm we want to have reflected back at us in the mirror every morning is an artificial construct - a fantasy achieved by a few, and then only with abject self-denial, vast expense and the aid of an army of assistants from plastic surgeons to personal trainers to airbrushers.

Yet somehow, smart as we think we are, and no matter how fervently we assert that the route to sanity is self-acceptance, when we deviate from this 'ideal', it's deeply troubling. The anxiety of not fitting in, of not conforming, of not being acceptable, surfaces again. Feeling 'fat' recalls all those horrid childhood memories of not being picked til last for the netball team, of being cast-out from the clique for not having Caran d'Ache colouring pencils, or some such stupidly trivial badge of belonging.

Like many women of my age and class, I've struggled with my relationship with food - 'normal appetite becomes pathologised as the enemy'. Fortunately, it's many years since I accepted that aspiring to eat nothing at all is not only time consuming (how the throught of food and its denial inhabits one's every waking hour), but also utterly bonkers. And actually, it was Weightwitches which de-pathologised my relationship with food, and re-taught me what a normal meal looked like. Yet in the office, the women talking about the new and seriously expensive diet drug Alli are not those with the required BMI of 28 - like me, most of them would need to be a good 28 pounds heavier to qualify - they're women who, again like me, struggle with this modern paradox. Whatever we might know and believe and subscribe to, and however much you might hear us praising the gorgeously voluptuous Joan, we still berate ourselves for not being Betty Draper.

But for me, the renewed commitment to a sleeker physical aesthetic is economically, rather than politically or even psychologically motivated: I simply can't afford a new wardrobe. I either drop the 13 lbs and wear last year's summer clothes, or I'm reduced to two or three rather ugly items in the wardrobe, one of which I last wore when pregnant. And it's also about time that I knuckled up to the harsher, more demanding world out there, rather than medicating myself with sweets and treats.

I can't pretend to have addressed any of the psychological issues that make me crave to maintain a weight that works for fashion. Nor can I pretend to have reconciled the contradictions around the distorted way women see themselves. Yet somehow I feel Orbach would support the breakthrough I've made in identifying the relationship that exists for me between troubled mood and disordered eating. Sometimes one needs to create a watershed moment in order to realise that one has both the courage and tenacity to square up to it and solve it.

THE FUTILITY SCHEME

As the recession bites, the cogs in the corporate machine bite harder. One spends ever longer slaving over a hot spreadsheet, trying to create magic formulae that will stop the numbers leaking off the page. Incessant demands rain down from on high for yet more strategies and even cleverer ideas. Vast swathes of time are laid waste sitting writing reports on what one would be doing if only one wasn't forced to sit and write a report about it.

And now that the series of measures designed to reduce the cost base has been implemented, one has even more work, because there are fewer people around to help you do it. Broadly speaking, one has to work triply hard to stay standing still, and I like nothing more than being left alone to make use of the idle minute.

So when another meeting is scheduled in the boardroom to discuss trading - or to 'share ideas' - my heart sinks even lower in my Pedro Garcia shboots. Two hours carved out of my day, sitting round an enormous table drinking bad coffee is its own particular kind of hell.

I've long since given up wondering if these Kafkaesque examples of corporate comradeship were secretly scripted by Martin Lukes, as colleagues discuss amiably whether they have the required bandwidth [tr: enough people ] or if something's actionable [tr: we can get on with trying to sort it out, as opposed to get the lawyers involved], or suggest escalating an issue. I spent a lot of time drawing confused doodles in my Smythson notebook before I realised this had nothing to do with making things worse, but simply meant it should be pushed upstairs for someone higher in the food chain to deal with. One is tempted to feed in bonkers stuff, exhorting people to 'get the potato on the fork', though in this environment the response would no doubt be that they were following Atkins.

In truth, meetings here are - management-speak aside - remarkable for the rational, open, professional and timely way in which they're conducted, with plenty of emphasis on debate and frank discussion.

But lately, and particularly in the wake of the recent issues, the tenor of these meetings has changed. People no longer speak out, or up. There is no more debate, or disagreement, or sticking of the head above the parapet. There's a new meekness, a subservience, an interest in toeing the party line. But what was more astonishing than anything was the dramatic sartorial shift: at least three-quarters of the attendees were wearing suits. This is a magazine company, not the civil service: employees are used to expressing themselves through their clothes and having the freedom to wear what they want when they want, whether it's 'trying incredibly hard' high fashion or dress-down friday chino-chic. The lines between 'home' clothes and 'work' clothes had become eroded over the last 15 odd years to the point where people no longer had a work uniform. Jeans were commonplace - albeit those with a hefty price tag, and worn with fabulous shoes.

And yet, overnight, the dress code has changed, reflecting a new, cautious, serious mood.

It's not just here, it's all over town - reports suggest that even at the top end, bespoke tailoring has never been more in demand: it's one of the few fashion categories that's in double digit growth. When you're a hedge fund manager and your fund is making pots of money for the client, no one cares if you're dressed in Havaianas and a pair of cut off denim shorts. But now things are tighter, and people more risk averse, it seems only the seriousness of a made to measure suit will do to convey the seriousness with which you take the guardianship of your client's money.

It's as if some new sumptuary law has been put in place: the economy and people's uncertainty about their jobs has rendered decoration, individuality and flair in poor taste. Clothes are cut along austerity lines, in sober neutrals. Waists are nipped in. Fabric used with a parsimony not seen since Molyneux, Worth, Amies and the rest of the Incorporated Society of Fashion Designer united in 1941 to create thirty-four utility clothing designs, with the CC41 label (Civilian Clothing 1941) sewn inside.

In 1942, the British government issued the Civilian Clothing Order, which made illegal the decorating of clothing with additional buttons, embroidery, extravagant cuffs or other frills and furbellows.

But in 2009, it seems we are more self-regulating. And it's not merely 'street-fashion', a trend coming consumer up rather than designer down: the key looks on the A/W 09 ready to wear runways also had strong tones of tailored austerity chic, and with the exception of the price tag, could have come straight out of the pattern book of those 34 Utility designs.

Prada set the tone with its boiled wool dresses, with slim, belted waists and defined, tailored shoulders.

Even Lanvin took an unusually sotto voce, pared down approach to severe tailoring, albeit one with a defiantly sexy edge

And me? Despite bellyaching about the way meetings appear to be a viable alternative to real work, I'm sure I'll be as suited and booted as the rest of them before the next session in the boardroom comes around.

If you want to be seen to be waging war on economic armageddon, better make sure you're in the right uniform.

EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY

I once had a dog. I miss the blissful softness of his silken spaniel ears and the guilty thud as he flopped off the sofa whenever he heard me coming. And I've never forgotten the disconcerting way he used to stare me awake with his baleful, unblinking eyes.

I still yearn for my dog. Forget fervent promises of visiting rights and access, custody was as good as lost the minute the removal van moved my things out of the house. Losing him to my ex was the bitterest part of a bitter ending, and the one thing I find it hard to forgive.

Occasionally, and heartbreakingly, I still glimpse him from across the other side of the park, being walked by the unspeakable one. I immediately duck behind the nearest tree for fear of having to attempt a civilised conversation, still impossible at ten years distance. Erm, I mean, impossible with the ex... obviously, I could talk to the dog... tee hee.

Actually, the dog was always appallingly badly behaved: very much the Alpha-male, belligerently ignoring his position in the pack. I once fed him an entire tin of Good Boy chocs, in the vain hope that they would do what they said on the can. My Ex and I both corrupted him horribly, each trying to get the dog to like one more than the other: the life of a tug-of-love puppy is ever thus. His behaviour deteriorated dreadfully of course, after we split up. And he would probably have ended up with a canine ASBO, if he hadn't had the excuse of coming from a broken home.

Anyway, as ever, the tail of this particular story is wagging the dog in the worst possible way. My intention was not to take you through a morose ramble round my past, but to share Dan Burn-Forti's magnificent pictures of the finest dogs you've ever seen, published in the June issue of UK Esquire magazine. From Stanley to Bluebell, these dogs are a perfect and adorable foil for the season's latest accessories, and gladden the heart of all who look at them.


This is Jack, in Dior Homme




Archie, in Brooks Brothers



Bee, in D&G



Stanley, in a Bailey of Hollywood pork pie hat: very Brad Pitt, no?



Mollie, in Cutler & Gross



Inka, in Thomas Pink



And, especially for Belgianwaffling and LibertyLondonGirl, Bluebell in Louis Vuitton


'Doggy Style': Reproduced with the kind permission of Esquire magazine. Photographed by Dan Burn-Forti.


To see the full story, and other examples of clever, brilliant journalism, the June issue of UK Esquire is on sale on 7th May at all key newsagents, or you can subscribe from only £15 for 12 issues. http://www.esquire.co.uk/

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

How on earth did Anna Wintour manage it for all those years? And how does Bono cope? And come to think of it, even Victoria 'Posh' Beckham?
The wearing of dark glasses in conditions other than bright sunshine is extremely counter-intuitive. It's hard to pull off when indoors, makes one very self-conscious, not to mention a danger to oneself and passers by at night, and looks incongruous when it's grey and overcast.

However, somewhere hovering around its edges is the idea that it’s also glamorous and enigmatic, and not a little film-starrish. One can't quite help but to stride around confidently yet warily, as if the paparazzi were lurking behind every bush and bollard. But like smoking – which, in the days when I did it magically made me over as Jean Seberg in Au Bout De Souffle - it’s a faux-allure: neither smoking nor sunglasses effects a Hollywood transformation, it merely makes one faintly ridiculous.


Anyway, my sunglasses aren't welded to my head because I'm trying to develop a mystique. Nor have I become an overnight sensation. I'm merely trying to disguise the grimness of my appearance so I don't frighten small children, perfect strangers or my colleagues. For the last four weeks, I’ve suffered from one eye infection after the other, each more grotesque than the last, with new, unimaginable rococo flourishes in the form of monstrous swellings and suppurating buboes. The not-wearing of makeup was bad enough - I could just about survive that with my amour-propre intact - but the ghastly disfiguring redness, swelling and pustular excrescences can only be disguised by glasses large enough for Jackie O.

In truth, it’s my own fault. Mr Trefusis told me that Hunca-Munca had been lobbing my makeup down the loo, but was unable to be specific about what had gone that way. Helpfully, he fished it out yet the tainted items somehow ended up jumbled in with the rest of my vast collection of beauty products and, unable to distinguish toxic from perfectly wearable, I was loathe to chuck out several hundred pounds worth of extremely fabulous upscale warpaint. I did start with a course of topical antibiotics, but was too idle to complete the course. Repeat this sentence several times until you understand the full scale of the self-inflicted stupidity of the thing.

Eventually, I end up at the optician, thinking I’ve done myself some permanent damage, and in a fit of churning anxiety at the idea of never again being able to wear eye makeup: either having to live with looking mouse-eyed and insignificant, or making an eccentric virtue out of the wearing of dark glasses forever more. But no, fears groundless etc, I have merely to devote myself with renewed vigour to another, stronger course of antibiotics and not give up on it this time after a few days once the symptoms have disappeared.

However, as a side story to all of this, the visit to the opticians has yielded quite a different return: having had perfect eyesight all my life, I discover I need glasses. And worse, the Optician says cheerily 'Don't worry Madam, it happens to everyone - it's just to do with getting older'. I restrain myself from clouting him with something hard and heavy. Reader, you can inject industrial amounts of botox into your forehead, but once reading glasses are prescribed, there’s no disguising your real age.

Oscar Wilde once remarked that London was full of women who’d been 35 for years, and I’ve been inclined to agree. Yet with my fabulous new Bulgari frames parked on my face as I stare at this screen - delighted to be able see what I'm typing - appearances are giving the lie to my lies. Ho Hum.

MEDITATIONS IN AN EMERGENCY

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.


From Frank O'Hara 'Mayakovsky' published in Meditations in an Emergency

NB: I fell in love with the poetry of Frank O'Hara many years ago, and stupidly forgot all about him until I was watching Mad Men a few weeks ago, since when I've unearthed my copy and been reading and re-reading: as I've just written on Tania's blog, I was trying to write a post about my father, who is very ill, and found I couldn't and all I had left were these beautiful lines.

VANITY OF VANITIES

I've been gloaming round with a face like a wet weekend, deep in the midst of a Scandi-depression. It's much like normal depression, except it comes with modular furniture and a fitted kitchen: Faktum exterior, with IrRationell interior monologues. I've lamented the parlous state of the economy in general and my finances in particular, executioners guilt at work, the ghastliness of an untidy house, the way one can't get the staff these days. I've quite wailed myself into a corner. I've evolved from simple solipsist into a philosophical zombie.

But is my life really directed by Ingmar Bergman, with a script by Strindberg and additional dialogue by Schopenhauer? Erm, I don't think so. It might just be time to give myself a shake and snap out of it. Wailing Verboten. Absolument interdit. Banished back to wherever it is wailing banshees come from. 

Spring poking its optimistic head through the dead earth has helped add a little cheer, but really, there's nothing like the idea of a party to perk up Mrs Trefusis. And I have not one, but two parties to go to tonight. Yippee. As I write, I'm looking at the invitations, enticingly engraved on board so thick I can't even bend it: They could stand up on their own on the mantelpiece, if only I had one. The first is to Esquire's Beat the Bleak cocktail party, and the second to a Fabulous Moet Celebration: A Tribute To Cinema, at which the new celebrity 'face' of Moet will be revealed, and where much champagne will be drunk by seriously glamorous looking people. 

I confess, since the invitations arrived when I was deep in the slough of despond - the only time in my life go anywhere near Slough - they didn't meet with unalloyed delight. The ungrateful, petulant, unbelievably spoilt child in me immediately started complaining: Gah, I grumbled, what am I supposed to wear? How can a single outfit take one from cocktails to 'Red Carpet' glamour, for such is the Moet & Chandon dress code? What am I to do about a dress of any kind, since calling something in from a pet fashion PR is off-limits, now that the misery eating has knocked the 's' off sample size. And then there's the depilation of legs and application of copious amounts of fake tan. Not to mention the pedicure and manicure and up-do and make-up and the fact that fabulous Graham* has swanned off to Southern Africa and isn't available to treat me to his usual hair-fabulousness (see profile picture for just one example of his amazing rug re-thinking talents).

And then I thought, Mrs Trefusis: you have become impossibly ungrateful and deserving of an emormous slap. Or detention. Or worse. Go directly to jail. Do not collect two hundred pounds. You have a wardrobe full of beautiful dresses that can work perfectly well for two-centre partying and you can adequately apply varnish to your own toes and probably even conjure up something halfway convincing in the hair department with the aid of a can of Elnett and some carmen rollers. Most people would give their eye-teeth to be in a position to have lovely invitations like this. And as my mother always used to say, 'You'll enjoy it once you get there'. I shall loiter as elegantly as I can, trying not to spill martinis and Moet down the vintage English Eccentrics frock, whilst surreptitiously taking pictures of famous folk on my iPhone. 

By God, I shall go to the ball. Get thee gone, Ingmar - it's all Busby Berkeley and Grace Kelly in High Society from here on in.

 And by the time Mr Trefusis discovers I've used his razor rather than the evil epilator to shave my legs, I'll be miles down the Westway in a lovely taxi.

*graham.tilley@hotmail.com