You had plenty money 1922

everyone knows fashion changes really fast these days. some trends last longer than others. However, what's interesting is noting the really long lasting permanent ones. Best way is probably tv and train carriages and platforms.

tv: due to it being filmed several months before, it can be trendy but not so trendy that it's out of date by the time it hits. Often it has to develop its own trends.

train carriages and platforms: all human life is here. It's not like buses - you have rich, poor, unemployed, tourists, workers, schoolkids, mums, people making short journeys and long journeys. people dressed in all kinds of fashions and styles.

So the main trend I've noticed? piercings and tattoos. In years gone by, people used to remove their piercings to go to work due to dress codes, still incredibly narrow. A shop I worked at for all of two days in the mid-90s had rules on how many piercings you could wear in your ears, and a strong implication that you were only allowed nose piercings if you were indian or pakistani. lip and eyebrow piercings? right out.

These days, you only have to turn your head to see someone in a suit, or the female equivalent of a suit, with a bunch of piercings. upper age range normally being late 30s. The average american show (much slower moving and conservative than british ones) have the girl from IT in a very carefully turned out immaculate white shirt and pencil skirt with 1950s makeup, but with a bar through her ear cartilage and a lip piercing.

Tattoos? glance at their feet and wrists. Everyone just has them. no big deal.

For all the costuming lot - got a query.

Doing a Greek dress - white material. Thing is, I know it would've been wool previously, but I want to wear this during summer as a normal dress as well, not just for a photoshoot. Is there any material you lot know of that I could use without having to line it that'll also drape correctly that's not bloody heavy?

Sewing is presumed to be minimal considering the design is classical greek unless I sew the strapping in place.

Tattoo whinging update : still sore. Back reminding me that it dislikes heavy moisturiser (or any moisturiser at all when it's not summer) by coming out in spots. Going to be so glad when it gets to the end of the second week and I don't have to moisturise. Not to mention, vitamin E cream is seriously, seriously heavy - much heavier than, say, Nivea, which is the heaviest I've ever used before.

Listening to highly illegal recorded in lap mp3 of JB's turn in Phantom as Raoul. Christine's voice is grating something chronic - keeps going into this weird squeak on the higher notes, which are, er, kind of *important* for the Christine role. Lovely on the mid-tones, though. And my god, JB's voice sounds so odd during the 'spoken' sequences - it's like he's been told to enunciate in pre-Regency affected tones (think Scarlet Pimpernel) in anything that's not a main song. I know it was 1992, but his voice sounds fairly normal (though a little younger) during the rest of it. Weird. Think I need to track down any other instances of English accent spoken when he's not being completely camp, since the majority of his roles have been American aside from Red, Red Rose, and his singing voice is a different beast altogether (something that always amuses me about the human voicebox - make it go controlled and tonal and it can suddenly sound like it's a different person altogether).

Have found tolerance of Lloyd Webber's 80s works is slipping. Too, I dunno, poppy and shallow/operatic? May start referring to the 80s as his melodramatic teenage years. Falling ridiculously in adoration for Sunset Boulevard and Evita though.

Also, work wtf : Just had an author who says she doesn't get on with the numbering system for reference citation and has problems with it as her excuse for screwing up the references. ...This would be the standard way to cite references that's been in place in the literary world for over a hundred years, the way articles and books *normally* cite references, that ensures you don't clutter the main text by putting a number in the text that you look up in the bibliography at the end? The system children learn to navigate by? Not to mention this author has published a hell of a lot of papers in this specific field. Internet Jesus only knows how much whoever edits the journals had to do on their previous submissions.

Addendum : need to kill other authors who don't read the journals they submit to and notice that we only have two fonts in use - bogstandard verdana/helvetica/arial with the bold/italic/subscript variations and courier new (typewriter/monospace text look) for gene sequences and computer code. Especially authors who have already *used* courier new in their manuscript for afore-mentioned computer code. :thwacks them round the head:

Got up at 7:15, resenting it all the way, trundled off to Paddington, got on train, sat down, then got mildly scared by the sudden appearance of legions of Japanese students on the platform, all crowding onto the train. Legions. All going to Cardiff. Yours truly was sitting with some design people going for a weekend training exercise, and zonked out just after Reading, so there went the train journey. Did it on the way back too.

Wandered around Cardiff city centre a bit, looked at some shoes, had a hot dog, got tattooed - fortunately two hours rather than three, which means I at least have a bit of cash (about 30 quid - riches, I tell you!) until the end of the month. Looks a bit odd since the leaves are bright yellow-green at the moment, and will take a couple of weeks to fade as they heal. Varied between a digging sensation and the pain kicking in when he was going over some bits. Simon (the tattooist) couldn't figure out why I was a bit cold so early until I pointed out that last time he'd had a portable heater in there, it being mid-January.

Talked a bit about a few things, including him asking how people'd taken the tattoo. When I'd said about more girls than blokes wanting to see it he reckoned it's because girls tend to plan theirs a bit more, the sea change in opinion about tattooing and body modification - parents' generation tended to think of it as not the sort of thing polite young people got - then we had a bit of a laugh about all the questions people ask about it hurting and your answer tends to be 'er, depends...'

Pubmeet tomorrow. Food shopping sunday. Oh yay, a week of cling-filming my back to look forward to. Must find where I put the sellotape.

In which it turns out that me and Cathy can now claim the role of 'geekier than other torchwood fans' due to being the first people to seek out the Pearl of the Orient and Bilis Manger's shop and take photos.

And that John Barrowman has the worst problem of corpsing known to man.

Also that when a tattooist says 'most people start shivering around the 2 and a half hour mark' that he's impressed by your endurance levels.

( Expedition Cardiff )

well, the Cinders novel is at 54,001 words, midnight has happened, now I just need to write the aftermath. which may or may not include shoes, but will include the Forsters sitting back and going 'pass the popcorn, will you?' Not sure whether to have mrs forster have hyperventilation issues.

Also, the fact that this fic now quite clearly is Jane Austen-era set, the one thing that always got me about Cinderella is now resolved. It's a damn sight easier to run in one shoe when you're wearing shoes with no heels.

Going through herbal tea. Yes, mr. Stephen Fry, I have technically succumbed to your advertising campaign, it's just the easiest way to get lemon and ginger and camomile for my throat. Finally succumbed to drinking tea. My mother and Steph will be so proud, considering it took me until I was 20 to start drinking even green tea, which is chinese and japanese restaurants only.

Plans for tomorrow : find ivy pictures. work on them in photoshop to get them looking like art deco so I can finally send them to the tattooist. Go watch Bond. (and juleskicks, that fic with Craig!Bond and Veronica Mars? You. Are. EVIL. couldn't stop laughing, and I know bugger all about VM) Finish nano.