Luica’s Blog

It’s quite an unusual choice of book for me, but the fact is I thoroughly enjoyed it and would highly recommend it to my girl friends.

Lucy Mangan’s Hopscotch & Handbags first came to my attention via an edited extract in the Guardian Weekend magazine. I was immediately won over by Lucy’s witty and sharp capturing of female pyschology. I kept smiling when reading it on the train and nodding in agreement in places.

Some of parts that made me chuckle:

On Relationships

Feminists may weep, but we must face facts: from the age of about eight onwards (later if you are posh and have ponies to obsess about and so can sublimate your sexual urges by competing in gymkhanas), the race is on to get a boyfriend.

This doesn’t have to mean much. To any suitably determined and self-confident prepubescent, any one of the following circumstances will entitle you to call an unsuspecting lad your boyfriend:

• He spoke to you.
• He looked at you.
• He ignored you - but that’s because he is shy and not because he is three years behind you in maturity and would notice you only if you were made entirely of footballs and sherbet fountains.
• He was nice to you.
• He was horrible to you - in a clever attempt to disguise the tender inclinations he harbours towards you.
• The teacher made you partners with him for a broad bean-growing experiment and your romantic connection grows with every daily progress report you write together.
• You bumped into him on the street out of school hours and he recognised you.
• You haven’t left his side for nine days and in the absence of a judge’s willingness to grant restraining orders to pre-teens, he must, for the sake of his mental health and classroom reputation, give a gloss of respectability to the situation by letting it be known that you are his girlfriend.
• You just told everyone that he is your boyfriend and if he doesn’t agree, well, it’s 28 against one, so there.

10 Favourite Topics of Conversation for New Mums

1. Sleep
2. Blood
3. Shit
4. Sleep
5. Tears
6. Sleep
7. Vomit
8. Any story that starts, ‘The doctor said he’d never seen anything like it …’
9. Any story that ends, ‘And then the rest just dropped out in my hand!’
10. Any story that contains the phrase, ‘… it was like a FIST …’

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 21st, 2007 at 9:45 pm and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.