Glücklichen Halloween

Glücklichen Halloween- Happy Halloween (everything sounds more fun in German.)


What day is it? Thursday. And who am I? Martha. BOOM yeah! This means that Martha Thursday is back on form happily neglecting my uni work in order to keep you, my little bunnies, happy.


As promised this week I bring you my guide to Halloween, but probably less of a guide and more of a collection of cool Halloween things that I just have to share with you, and somewhere down this page I'm hoping I will have come up with some sort of amusing anecdote, because so far I have nil and this blog is improvised so I shouldn't promise you anything (or have told you the blog was improvised.)


Searching for Halloween costumes over the last few weeks I have been bombarded by billions (not billions about 3) yahoo answer things with girls going on about how they don't know what to wear for Halloween because a) they don't have any money and b) they don't want to look like (sorry for the repeated notion) sluts.


I have this equal problem, though my problem is further worsened by the fact the theme of the party I am attending is 'celebrity zombie' and having a fringe inhibits me a little unless I plan on going as Velma for everything for the rest of my life. 

Here is my pick of the best inventive Halloween costumes as the perfect antidote to the damsel in distress look (I am not a damsel in distress and if I was I would tell the bouncer not you.)




(RIGHT-pixelated lady, using face paint and a patchwork jumper.)

( ABOVE LEFT-Roy Lichenstein- yes I am cultured- styled face paint)

(BELOW- iPod adverts)

(ABOVE LEFT- a blueberry, I know she's about 6 but I'd love to dress up as this!)

(BELOW LEFT- chewing gum at the bottom of a shoe, wanted to be this but I was refused)

(ABOVE RIGHT-one of my own, Lady Penelope)

(Firefox logo)

As you can see I am on old Lindsay's side about Halloween, (more Cady from mean girl's idea of Halloween and not actual Lohan because she's quite the slapper on occasions.) its about looking funny not sexy, in fact I would say it's probably when you look your most ridiculous so please embrace this idea. I promise you will have far more fun if you go out looking revolting to begin with and not having to worry about maintaining a floppy up-do, (though I am being Jessie J this Halloween so I'm probably going to be spending my whole night in mbargo toilets reapplying crystals to my lips.)

(CADY)

(Lindsay)

What could be more fantastically Halloween than ripping the shredded insides out of poor little pumpkin. It was always a clear indicator that Halloween was truly on the way when my mum had bought back a pathetic plastic pumpkin carving kit from pound land and me and my siblings insisting she carved Mona Lisa's smile into it then crying when this piece of plastic crap knife snapped as soon as it touched the pumpkin. Here are some inspiring pumpkins, I don't expect any of you even to attempt them.

(Star Wars pumpkins)

('Play with your food' pumpkin)

(Real Cinderella coach)

(pumpkin burger, I'll have mine without seeds)

So yeah my Halloween guide is no guide at all, but seeing as I never made it to girl guides what else can you expect, in fact when people ask me for directions I tend to panic and make some up even if I don't know where they're going. So as an effort to try and distract you from this poor effort as a guide I will make my writing black and orange and flash some photos of how I am planning to surprise my flat mates by decorating our home.

(Harry Potter house, now where will I find a bed sheet that big?)

(pumpkin king house, slightly concerned about the house going up in flames.)

ハピ　ハロウイン- That's Happy Halloween in Japanese, another effort to distract you from my none guide

You look lovely dear

Back home last week, I was conducting the usual manoeuvre of looking around the village book shop with my mother (she goes through books like I do Krispy Kremes or vodka for that matter.) Trawling the coffee table books I was swooning over alll the titles, Dior: 60 years of style, Fashion Illustration: Harpers Bazaar, The Art of Being a Well Dressed Wife....


I dropped it like a hot brick, a very politically incorrect hot brick.(Although I was very pleased that this had given me a blog idea and I wouldn't have to use my rather dire emergency stash of blog ideas.) But how to be a stylish wife?! Are we in the 1800's? Surely women have more ambition in their lives than to sit around wondering whether their Mr. Man finds them aesthetically pleasing enough? This got me thinking about fashion and yes here it is, the f bomb, feminism.

(cheers for that one Banksy.)

People (mainly women) tend to roll their eyes and put their fingers in their ears whenever I bring up this subject. But having been bought up, not only by hippie parents (my father currently still wears his hair in a pony tail, rides around on a moped and paints his toe nails gold), but my mother is the most fierce of feminists so I find it hard not to be at least a little passionate.


Don't get me wrong, I get it, in this day and age feminism can seem a little past it, obsolete and irrelevant. We have the vote, we have equal pay, equal rights so what are we moaning about? Well it all seems to be rather image based these days. what we wear and who and who can't tell us what to wear.


The mind numbingly obvious example to use here is the slut walks. BELOW I PROVIDE A BRIEF HISTORY OF SLUT WALKS IN BRACKETS FOR THOSE WHO NEED IT, IF NOT SKIM OVER.


(The SlutWalk protest marches began on April 3, 2011, in Toronto, Canada, and became a movement of rallies across the world. Participants protest against explaining or excusing rape by referring to any aspect of a woman's appearance. The rallies began when Constable Michael Sanguinetti, a Toronto Police officer, suggested that to remain safe, "women should avoid dressing like sluts") Thank you wikipedia now back to you Miss. Thursday.

(no caption needed)

Women were angry, it was being suggested they were asking to be raped, and I don't think that in the history of forever anyone ever wanted to be raped. When I saw the slutwalk through Bristol the other day I couldn't help but feel a little sisterhood pride, but it did get me to thinking why do we dress like that? Short skirts? High heels? See through top? Are we sluts? The word is in the dictionary and as I type it, it doesn't have that squiggly red line underneath it (interestingly neither does the word squiggly), so it has to be a real concept?

(and again)

When the men in our lives say to us 'You're not going out like that are you?' are they being sexist or just warning us we're in for a hot pursuit? Who are we doing this for? Is it for ourselves or do we secretly crave this attention? (However i found my body to be a bit of a sexual obstacle course, oh when i say body i mean that item of clothing that looks like a leotard, its like an all encompassing chastity costume, I can't even get it undone.)


So with Halloween coming up thick and fast and with all the female costumes being 'sexy' this and 'vixen' that does this mean that this what we want? To look like vixens? It must be because that's all that's on offer?

(don't remember old snowwy looking much like this.)

Or could it just be that we know we're smoking and we want to make the best of our bodies? One day we'll be 56 sat in drinking baileys hot chocolate and downing 30 crunchies at a time and we'll be sat their saying "why oh why didn't I wear that sexy geisha ninja costume?!" (google it, it's a real costume.)


My message is to all my sisters, wear what you want, do it with integrity and never for anyone else, do it for yourself.

Right on sister




footnote- for those of you who are less inclined to the bare bum costumes, stay tuned I will have your comprehensive guide to Halloween next week.

Old dress, new tricks

OK so I am beginning to realise what a joke my late blogs are becoming, so I'm going to try and pitch it to as being like a long awaited fashion show that just wouldn't be the same if it didn't kick off a little later than expected. (A little self praising I know but I thought I'd give it a try.)


And besides all that my blog this week is all about vintage so I can afford for Martha Thursday to be a little past her best, out of style and old.


Well it all started the other week when a very broke miss Thursday was wandering down Gloucester road for a perfectly innocent piece of chocolate tart (if a piece of chocolate tart can ever be innocent), when all of a sudden a jamboree of mickey mouse sweat shirts, itchy granny cardigans and beaten up doc martens came to her attention. A little after half an hour and a trip to the cash point later (this vintage lark has a vintage way of paying, nothing plastic) She emerged with her very own beaten up pair of black doc marten lace ups.

(these aren't mine, I wish they were.)

(Going to stop talking in second person now it was getting confusing.) 


I was thrilled, I had been DESPERATE for a pair of docs for months and had paid a minuscule £30 for these bad boys. I hadn't wanted new ones though, I always find there's something rather charming about other peoples clothes, its like you reincarnate a dead trend.


I was literally walking a mile in someone else's shoes and I found it a hopelessly painful experience resulting in some of the biggest blisters I have ever seen, prompting  a sleepy friend of mine to wake up another sleeping flat mate to show her this shocking display. I felt as though my marvelous martens weren't faithful to me yet, like I'd adopted a slightly older child that was set in his ways.


My week continued along the blast from the past theme when a long blond friend of mine took me vintage shopping on park street, and I went on a mad spree in oxfam boutique (you know the one that tries to kid you into thinking its not actually a charity shop) I figured that if my splurge went to those in need it justified me buying a giant purple blazer barney would be proud of, mittens with pom poms and 101 dalmatian scarf?

(see don't look like a charity shop does it?)

This got me to thinking though, what is the fuss about vintage? Would we look twice at it if it was in a charity shop (not one describing itself as a boutique) and we thought some old lady had died in it? We fork out hefty amounts of cash for things that are quite often frankly outdated, ill fitting and with the most unpleasant odour. What is our obsession with vintage?

(however this does.)

It's reproduced all over the place in the forms of rustic restaurants or kitsch kitchen kitchen wear (THAT'S YOU KIDSTON) which kind of defies the point of 'vintage.' We even want our photographs to have a vintage feel in sepia tone (we've all youtubed the dickhead song right?) 


So to try and solve this conundrum I went vintage bowling at the lanes. Putting on the most beaten up pair of bowling shoes that were positively humming and carting a seriously smudged bowling ball down the 'side free' isle, I couldn't help but feel it was all slightly mad. But after a very questionable cider or two it came to me like a vintage epiphany.


I had consumed so much vintage that week that it was like I was living someone else's fashionable life. Is vintage just a way of escaping a world we'd rather not be in? It's a bit like playing pretend or dress up when you're a kid, you don't want to live in the real world so why not head back into an era you might actually want to live in.

(aaahh to feel like this again)

 I seem to remember that I had felt quite depressed that week (can't really remember why because it has taken me SO LONG TO BLOG, probably something to do with money.) So instead of running away to Chelsea to play with Francis, which was the original plan, I had effectively adorned myself in someone else's life. Staying on theme all the way down to me revisiting a vintage friendship, when an old acquaintance came down and we re-used our friendship once more, (hoping that will stay on trend.)


So the deal is, vintage is what you make it, it's not so much a trend or about how you look but how it makes you feel, apart from the few prats who wear those slutty granny jumper things, you know the ones that look like a cats been sick on them? They're not in it for the culture just for the granny slut perks. If you wanna save money try a dress agency, they do pretty much the same job but they clean the clothes and the shops don't smell like incense (not that I would know.)


Someone yell at me in a week to do another blog.