Find your level...

I haven’t blogged for an absolute age – probably since the day after I got the fantastic advice that I should write something every day to develop my writing style…hmmm.

For those of you who know me well, you will know that Jolly Spoon has been busy in other creative ways, but more about that another time.

I have various notepads dotted around my house, mainly due to my unfortunate tendency, (courtesy of my mother), towards obsession.  I see a notebook I like and I HAVE to have it.  I then can’t bring myself to write in it because it is too beautiful to sully with my scribblings.  After the requisite amount of time has passed, or I have bought a more covetable notebook which bumps it down the list, I can add a neat (to start with) reminder, note or good doodle (usually heart related) to the first, fresh page.

Notebooks are a little bit like clothes for me – obviously not because I wear them, I am not that bonkers – but because they have a similar grading system to each other.  Finding a “Perfect Top” and finding a “Perfect Notebook” cause almost identical chemical reactions in my brain.

You see a top.  You like it.  You try it on. It fits.  You look good in it and you scurry off to the till to make it officially yours! You then need to find the perfect occasion to wear your new top – you can’t just pop it on the next morning for goodness sake!

It starts life as a “Going Out” top.  After a few wears, you feel like it isn’t as special as when you first bought it.  Everyone looks at you like “She’s got that top on again…” and the pictures on Facebook begin to be indistinguishable from one party to the next.

The poor top is downgraded to “Day Wear”.  Depending on who you are, what you do and how often you work, it might become a “Work” top.  For some people, this is the level immediately below “Going Out” and for others it is only just above “Gardening and DIY”.  I know someone who has organised her levels unlike anyone else in the universe, but for fear of death or at the very least maiming, I cannot share the absolute hilarity with you I am afraid.

Some of the sub–levels worth a mention, but not to be worried about in any detail are:

“Weekend Daytime Going Out” – inclusive of, but not limited to:  Jeans (not boyfriend style), Chiffon tops (not low cut) and Dresses (not short – unless it’s sunny and then NEVER with heels)

“Cruise Wear” – always with sequins, has to have at least 4 matching items (including 3 pairs of shoes and 4 handbags)

“Exercise Wear” – I won’t grace this disgusting sub-level with detail.

“Lounge Wear” – a relatively new sub-level.  At one point, it was completely unacceptable for your friends to ever see you in your dressing gown. Now it is positively encouraged.  This new level includes: cartoon character inspired t-shirts, pj sets and the dreaded onesie.  You can tell an awful lot about someone from their lounge wear style…mostly things that you didn’t want to know.  

Some of you will be predicting that I will launch into my usual Pants vs Pyjamas debate at this point.  I WILL NOT.

Anyway, I digress.  The “Going Out” top has fallen through all of the levels and has eventually reached the bottom.  It has fallen apart, or just doesn’t go with any of your current selection of jeans and leggings.  It languishes in the back of your wardrobe or airing cupboard, occasionally popping out for you to sneer at it and shove it back into oblivion.  If it is lucky, it might end up in a charity shop – to be discovered and reloved by a new owner, but more often or not, it will end up as a rag or in the bin.

The notebook equivalent of this is the “Pit of Despair”, also known as being given to my children to scribble in.  The poor pad has been through the “Christmas List” and “Handbag Jotter” sub-levels already and wishes it hadn’t skipped past the “Lost in a Storage Box” level.  

Its last hours are spent as a canvas for an Angry Bird drawing or a Hello Kitty painting.  The final nail in the coffin comes from a felt tip pen, held in one place for too long, whilst the child is distracted by a passing cat or an episode of Phineas and Ferb.  All remaining pages have now been ruined as the ink soaks through each layer and spreads like a disease to the back cover.  No fresh, blank pages remain and the recycling bin beckons.

This blog entry was supposed to be about ‘Things that annoy me on a regular basis’, which have been collated over the last few weeks in my “Kitchen Side” notepad, which exists also for notes to my husband and things that I need from the Coop. That will now have to be my next blog entry I think. 

I will leave you with the image of the first page in a current notepad of mine, followed by the most recently written on one.  It is the perfect pictorial representation of the “levels” in action…