The September Issue

You know how sometimes you just don't want a film to end? No? Well sometimes I don't... and I haven't felt that way about a film in ages! But yes..I didn't not want this one to end!!!!!! EVER! Love Anna and Grace!

Oh what a night!

IN

OUT

(Pics:The Huffington Post)

I was again glued to my TV set last night in utter disbelief at the course the events of the day had taken. Britain woke up on Tuesday morning still not sure when or indeed it'll have a new PM.

And by the end of the day, Gordon Brown had resigned delivering the most genuine and emotional speech I've seen him give and letting in the first conservative PM in thirteen years.

It was a breathtaking day as Nick Robinson put it on his blog.

The youngest prime minister in nearly 200 years.
A coalition in power for the first time in 70 years.
The Conservatives ejecting a Labour government for the first time in over 30 years.

However all these dramatic events did not take away from the night's suspense. Despite his trip to Buckingham Palace and his speech in front of No.10, David Cameron had so much more to tell the people of Britain, like:

What does a full and proper coalition with teh Lib Dems really mean?
What jobs and how many are the Lib Dems getting in his cabinet?
And how just HOW is a Lib-Con gov. going to work???

My favorite moments:

• When GB's voice broke as he spoke about his family. Really touching.
• When the Browns (including the two boys who are super cute and made GB look all sweet and human just for a moment) came out to greet the press on their way to Buckingham Palace.
• Samantha Cameron starting to wave at the press and then breaking into a timid smile as if to say 'I can't believe I'm doing this!'

LFW S/S 2010

This should've been written months ago (in Feb to be specific) but since I've only just returned to my beloved blog, here we are.There's so much I can say about my first EVER London Fashion Week, Well, me first EVER fashion week full stop!

The S/S 2010. So much that it would be very hard to know what to say or where to start. I mean here I was in the midst of one of the most important fashion events in the world, jaw dropping and completely in awe when I realised this could never be something I do full time.

There's something to be said about getting too close to something you love, you get to see the nitty grittys; the not so glamorous side of it. When you're there you become too close to the actual putting together of the event, the dealing with models, seating arrangements, the press, the egos and the ridiculous amount of pretentious people all trying t get in and all trying to look like they belong ( I know I'm very safe in that category because I very much DID NOT look like I belonged at all!) The thing that struck me the most is how very VERY serious most of the people I met are about themselves and fashion.

But what did I expect this is LFW it's not the World Economic Forum (not that the latter doesn't enjoy it's fair share of pretenders and wannabes as well!) and they are both very serious events within their right.

This is not at all to say that I didn't enjoy London Fashion Week but I guess it was the complete outsider that is me being struck by all this ...hmmm..sartorialism shall we say. There were so many great looks on and off the catwalk. I managed to get really nice photographs and this one just below has got to be my favourite.

This cool fashionisto works in fashion production. I couldn't resist his Hermes bag and his D&G military jacket...Ah I WANT that JACKET!!!

Me

Me and the Alexander McQueen Tribute Wall

Fashion Blogger Katie Wright.Looove that red cape!

Rebecca

Lulu

A journalist for an Italian fashion magazine. Why can't I ever pull an outfit like that off!

Me just outside the venue at the entrance of Somerset House

Ok before I go, My favorite moments:

My first ever catwalk show. I loved every minute of it!!!!Eun Jeong's S/S 2010 collection was very true to her signature draping. I loved the necklaces hanging on the backs of the models.I loved the live music as the models walked down the runway.

At the end of the last day I saw a couple of fashionistas looking all glam and 'we're so important we're one of the event organizers' and as I was leaving I saw then take off their heels in agony and put on flats. And to make things that much better I saw them on the tube on my way home. All normal hee hee.

Style Inspiration -- In my Hood

Szofia Cassidy: My first chronicled Style Inspiration. Love that jacket and the vintage'y bag!

Ok, I promise I'm not trying to be Face Hunter, Street Peeper or The Sartorialist(see my blog list;). Although I must, now that I'm talking about them admire what they do and thank them for it.

When those three entered my world; by sheer chance may I add, a whole world of style and uniqueness was open to me. It became less about fashion and more about style for me.They've made 'the beautiful people' very accessible. And in the midst of the pretence and wannabe'ism that we face everyday, a great deal of these photographs are about people with real individual style and originality. Thanks you guys we need more!

I must here mention the respect I have for them now that I tried to do what they do on a much much smaller and amateurish scale.

So yeah, back to me and my feeble attempts, I'm not trying to do what they do. I am, however, forcing myself from time to time to face one of my fears and walk to absolute strangers, tell them how amazing they look and ask if I can take their photographs...

Yes, you cynics out there and I know many of you (as I am one of you!) it is part of my self cleansing through blogging and trying new things and all that sort of shit. Yes this is what it is and I love it! So shut up! (me, that includes you too!)

I mean this whole blog whatever I write about is supposed to be first and foremost about inspiration people and things that inspire me and make me feel good and alive. Holding on to anything that captures my imagination and chronicling it and may be just may be being a little braver on the way.

Have I been successful so far??? yyeeeeeenoooooo... Well, I chicken out most of the time. I see so many amazing looking people and either convince myself that they are in a hurry or indeed that I am, or that my camera is not ready... but then out of the handful that I actually approached and the few that told me to go away nicely (or not)a couple of people said yes.

Szofia Cassidy is my first ever style inspiration subject and so she'll always hold a great place in my heart an on this blog!




I saw her in my local mall and she just looked absolutely effortlessly fabulous... Everything I love about a look. Simple and stylish with careful attention to detail. Loooved the Chanel style jacket and the vintage handbag.

Of course the second thing I thought after 'oooh look how stylish' is how I can adapt that to a hijab look? So let's see...I think the top and jacket are perfect may be with a baggier pair of jeans but not slouchy. may be flares or a nice boot cut. Or some nice linen baggy trousers I'm thinking navy (especially for my figure!) Zsofia, thanks for the inspiration and for the photos.

More Elephantz

That's gotta be one of my favorite ones! When I saw it I told Kate I wanna be one of those children!

Me and the fun elephant

Me and the Henna Elephant

If this print was on a dress i'd toootallly buy it!

Bear looks happy!

Love the colours

I've always loved fiery colour combinations especially on elephants!

Around the world on 80 elephants

Those eyes!

Me and the monkeeez elephant

Fun fun fun calaaaz!

Today started out really shitty and ended fab. I went elephant spotting in Green Park with the lovely Kate and the combination of her,hot chocolate in Green Park and those coochie elephants made it all ok! Thank you Kate, Thank you Elephant Family.

Out wit da elephantz

OOOH I wanna take him home!

Looking good in the hood, he's on eof my favourites that one!

Just opposite Trafalgar Sq. Ah woman step away from me elellphaaannnt!

I call this one below the Zen elephant

Ahhhhhhhh how cute is that!!!!!! (both of us I think!)

The Lion ELepahnt!

If you're walking around your hood and suddenly notice a colourful life sized fiber glass baby elephant, fear not. This is not a remake of Planet of The Apes:The Elephants Return. Its actually the elephant parade. It's part of a campaign to save the endangered Asian elephant. It's organized by the charity group Elephant Family.

260 life sized baby elephants have been creatively painted and embellished by top artists to add some colour and awareness to the city.I must say I'm in love.

I walked around Covent Garden and Trafalgar Sq.giving tourists stern look to get away from me elephantz so I can take proper pics.And as you can see it worked ... ehemm at times. I'm on the hunt for more and will be adding them to this post. Sloane Sq. and Green Park next.

By the way this brings to mind one of my favourite (slightly made up) Arabic words... 'Feyoola'. 'Feel' is the transliteration of the word elephant in Arabic. The correct plural is Feyela (elephants). My more ringy ziny plural is feyoola. Hmmm this is the most I actually thought about this word ever!

Me and the HP

(cartoon courtesy of humour.co.uk)

After a marathon of a UK general election, the British people still have no idea who their Prime Minister is. It's a case of HP; a hung parliament. Which is fancy talk for 'no one won and the big boys have to play together after all'. Till this minute though; Gordon Brown is still resident at No.10, James Cameron and Nick Clegg are in talks and the world is left to watch and speculate.

Even the veterans of British politics (and there were many up all night last night) couldn't predict what would happen. The media muscle in all it's glory (that includes the virtual fortress of Jeremy Vine!) could only tell you what would happen if....

And more than 24 hours later that's still what they're doing. This post isn't really about political analysis but more about my personal reflections of the night and how I surprised myself in staying up all night last night watching it and staying up all night tonight blogging about it.

But before I go on I have a confession. Having lived in the UK for the last three and a half years I must say British domestic politics bores the shit out of me! Apart from Andrew Marr (with whom I have a real fascination) and the governments' stance on immigrants (like myself), I'm bored out of my head with domestic news.

I don't really care about UKIP ,UCAS , Unite, U name it! And still don't know my Berkshire from my elbow! (I'm not proud of it...I'm simply admitting that some of it confuses me and the rest is watching paint dry.)

BUT BUT BUT, last night was different. Actually the whole of last month was different. Thanks mainly to the PM debates. Suddenly there was a real race, the three men were... well, just that men, human. People whose policies we could discuss to our hearts' content but really, you just wanted to watch what they did, how they responded to each other and which one was going to make the first gaffe (ehemm Mr.Brown that would be you!)

And then came election night. The BBC's star cast pulled an all nighter to make sense of the results as they happen and to announce the potential resident of 10 Downing Street. As the night went on and the results came in ,things got quite unpredictable.

With each result announced, it became clear that there were no real winners. Oh, except (in my view) the Green Party's Caroline Lucas in Brighton (Parliaments first ever Green Party MP) and Labour's Margaret Hodge in Barking (eat your heart out Nick Griffin).

By the next morning this much was clear. It was an election of failures:

• Labour lost 91 seats in parliament with only 258 it manged to grasp.
• The Conservatives gained 97 seats but failed to get a majority with only 306 seats. 20 seats short of being able to form a government.
• The Lib Dems..Oh the Lib dems! They were the biggest disappointment of the night. Not only did they not manage to cash in on the Cleggmania and gain a larger more proprtionate existence in parliament, they actually LOST 5 seats ending up with only 57.

All right,all right... I know,you know, I know! But seriously I was eating this stuff up like it's going out of business! Not really because of how unprecedented it was or because every expert alive and awake that night was saying they saw nothing like it.

Frankly this is the first ever British election I consciously follow. When Blair made history in 1997 I was more worried about being fat, my summer vacation wardrobe and whether the gang back in Alexandria would welcome me back or if I'd been officially ousted because I'd moved to Doha. Thirteen years later and I'm still worried about being fat. Oh! and about the outcome of this election.

Last night was more about that feeling I had when Obama was elected (not comparing the man's charisma or the night's outcome!) But the feeling that was a part of something big that I was watching (tweeting and facebooking) a new page in the history of this country. Even though I didn't vote, I haven't been here long enough, I still felt curious and anxious to know how this was going to turn out. But like everyone else I'm left to wait.



Just before I go,my own highs and lows:

My highs of the night: C4 and The Two Jeremies!

• Jeremy Paxman. Loved him , loved him , loved him! He was animated as always but a lot less scary.
• Jeremy Vine and his virtual bubble! Loved the dominoes, the tiles and the UK map floor!
• Channel 4's Alternative Election night.(Charlie Brooker's bits to be specific)

My lows: Gosh where do I start?

• Bruce Forsyth with Andrew Neil in his first 'Thames' segment! CRINGE , CRINGE!!
• People queueing up and not being able to vote.
• Sleep depraved TV giants and experts at the crack of dawn not being able to tell us where the hell all of this was going.
• My left wisdom tooth deciding to be a bitch and swell in the midst of all this action. Pain like that needs a name of its own BTW!!

Word de jour: Confidence and Supply

Word d'hier: Hung Parliament