Birthday Suit

Prologue- We now have a facebook 'like' box to your right. Give it a click, I've made it nice and handy for you.


So what with it being November time, it's that time of year when for some unknown reason, rather selfishly, everyone I know decides to have their birthday all at once. This will also happen again in February, which is why it sometimes makes me happy that I'm single and don't have to buy any poor doting boy a box of over priced liquor chocolates (and let's be honest other than your aunt Babs does anyone really like those? Might I add I don't have an aunt Babs.)

I was in Cardiff last weekend celebrating one of my homies bdays (aren't I in with the kids.) She laid several dresses out on the bed, "which should I wear? I really like this one but I don't want to look too dressy."


Excuse me? Isn't a birthday the one time of year you can get away with wearing whatever you want? Isn't it the one time of year everyone actually expects you to look like a stuck up hoe bag who wears ball gowns to their local pub (not trying to suggest she looked like a stuck up hoe bag.) I mean I wore feathers on my last birthday, FEATHERS! What sort pretencions moron wears feathers on a night out?

(An image of me entering my last birthday, just kidding, the My Super Sweet 16 kids know how to do pretencious moron.)

I have another birthday weekend coming up tomorrow (see I told you, selfish), her name has been mentioned in  previous blogs but I'm not gonna mention it again, people might get jealous. And it seems to me that birthdays come with a certain amount of stress and not just for the guests like me who are counting the last few pennies and Canadian coins they have found down the side of the sofa, but for the birthday girl too. Tomorrows birthday girl was expressing many anxieties on what she should wear and how she was going to afford anything.


So maybe it's not as simple as 'wear what you want'? When it comes to birthdays, what to wear and what not to wear?


Thinking back to my own birthday (as painful as that is) I could only recommend to perhaps not wear your very favourite outfit, yes you might look Divine at the beginning of the evening but by the time any photos are taken you could quite happily fit into the cast of fraggle rock. I'm pretty sure that my aim was to go out in a dress not a scrumpled up top version of my dress with my knickers on show. I also probably didn't intend to go out wearing not just mine but everyone else's drinks, a flashing birthday boy badge (belonging to my male flatmate) a face that Medusa would be proud of, and a temporary Chanel neck tattoo that looks like scabies.

(I wish I had looked as composed as this)

But then if you can't dress up on your birthday when can you dress up? I would say a wedding but at my most recent gay wedding after a little too much cava I was in a very similar state. My best advice would be to plan ahead. Wear something you are really pleased with, that you know you look absolutely gorgeous in, but you also know is pretty fail safe, don't do feathers, do not wear feathers! And of course wear the most ridiculously , over the top, disgustingly big and bright birthday badge you can find, then everyone has to be nice to you. Pretty sure that even though I was looking like Medusa people were acting like I was Angelina Jolie.


Now when it comes to birthday guests there are rules too. It's like showing up to a wedding dressed in white, it is key not to outshine the birthday girl or guy. At my friend's Cardiff birthday, after she had had her hair curled I made sure no one else did so that her hair could not be up staged or out curled. Now I'm not saying you have to dress like a complete minger, just make a special effort to make sure ALL of the attention is on them, IE say things like 'it's her birthday buy her a drink!' they'll appreciate that.

(remember be nice, no matter how obnoxious they get)

What they won't appreciate is if you turn up at the club, for their 20th birthday the only remaining guest still wearing a  gold party hat, and when people ask if it's your birthday you say yes, consequently getting the entire smoking area to sing happy birthday to you and not your friend. Yes, they don't love you for that. 


Ultimately, if it is your birthday you shouldn't have read this blog, because I don't want to have caused you any further stress, yikes, should have put this at the beginning really. 


One last piece of advice, don't bother with that joint birthday lark, because ultimately your 'friend' you're sharing your birthday with is ether gonna prettier than you or have more friends and you're just gonna wind up depressed. And let's face it no one wants to share their birthday!


Happy Birthday November babies

It's beginning to feel a lot like the c word

Very disappointed in myself. My track record was going so well but low and behold it is a Friday and not a Thursday. I do have an excuse though, after being abandoned by all of my house mates last night as they went away for the weekend, I was far too busy barricading my door shut rather than writing my blog. Also before we start just thought I'd draw attention to the fact that Martha Thursday has had a bit of a makeover, you like? My bum doesn't look big in it then?


In our house the c word can mean any number of things (might I add I'm not actually talking about the c word, to write a whole blog about that might be a little bit weird), it ranges from camping, to Cliff house (my Grandpa's house) to finally Christmas. All of which are taboo words to my father who doesn't enjoy conversations about any of the above.


Usually any mention of a certain holy one's birthday before the first of December makes me feel down right depressed. I feel like I'm running out of time like the years come to the end already and it's only November! It also reminds what an excellent present buyer I am (I don't like to brag but ask anyone who's received a Martha gift and I'm sure they will concur) but this comes with it's down sides as a good present usually means a good amount of money, (and I have to say that around 50% of the time the favour is not usually returned.)

(crap present, get it?)

I also (despite my many similar personality traits to Miranda Hart) do not hold a glowing warm delightful air about me. I tend to be quite a cynical b**ch about the following: Valentines day, Anniversaries (any sort of couples related activity), children, Romantic comedies, pretty much anything that brings unadulterated joy into someones life. So Christmas, as you might have guessed is not my forte.

But dashing around the likes of Clifton and Bristol yesterday (this is just how last minute mt blog idea was this week), interviewing boutique owners for my guest posting I will be doing for someone else's blog (don't worry my little bunnies this will not affect Martha Thursday) I couldn't help but feel a little tingle and the corner of my lips turn up as I caught a glimpse of the Christmas windows.


It was like that Richmond sausage advert, (I hope people know what I'm talking about if not here's a link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVjQOIdariU. It's like the Christmas window was my Richmond sausage and I was saying 'Stop the bah humbug!' (can i get away with this extremely far fetched comparison? seemed to make sense two minutes ago.) I saw my childhood flash before my eyes. My mum taking me to Daisy and Tom toy store every December to see the Christmas window display.


I remembered the wild desire that used to rush through my system every time I caught glimpse of an artificial rabbit spinning wildly on its mechanical pivot on a plastic ice rink. When the Grinch said 'maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store, maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more', he obviously didn't know where to shop. Or perhaps I'm simply an even bigger Grinch than the Grinch himself.

(this could easily be me and my mother, she is the epitome of Cindy Lou who, who turns out to be Jenny from gossip girl! They kept that one quiet)

I realise I am writing this blog on the wrong week. I am going up to London this week which has a plethora of Christmas window displays but I am so lacking in ideas at the moment that you would have to wait an extra week for this and my blackberry camera isn't very good so your better off me google imaging anyway.


So here we are, gorgeous lovely shop windows for you to ooh and ahhh at, to wish you were the mannequin stood behind the glass and  take that step into Christmas that both Elton John and the retail industry want you to take.

(Harrods, December 2009)

(Harrods, Peter Pan window display, December 2010)

(Selfridges London, December 2008, now where did they find a tube carriage?)

(Bloomingdale's December 2008)

('Dear Santa'- Macy's December 2009)

(Rob Ryan does shop windows December 2010)

(Merry Chanel)

(Tiffany&co December 2009, would highly recommend looking at the other windows of that year, really lovely!)

Hopefully Santa will have got my letter and by this time next week I won't be able to write any further blogs because either Francis or Jamie or Spencer (I don't care whoever really) from made in Chelsea will have fallen in love with me and I won't be returning from London.

Merry November

Oh door man!

Firstly before any sort of blog occurs I would like to clear up some confusion. I am not actually Velma, as the right hand side of my blog indicates, I am not in fact married to Mark Ronson (although he has been replaced by Francis Maximilien Yvan Christophe Boulle since he got married to that french tart.) I am not best friends with a cartoon rabbit and Christian Dior did not leave me his family home, and surprisingly enough my name isn't Thursday. This is my blog persona, how depressing to ruin the illusion, but I had to clear that one up after a certain Irish acquaintance of mine was telling everyone about this fabulous pink giant house I own, nah ahh....


Anyway, blog...


Crying into my bowl of chicken supernoodles the night after Halloween and stuffing my face with 3 bags of haribo spooky mix that was bought for trick or treaters but selfishly only put out one bag. On a hungover whim I decide I want to go to London, Chelsea in fact.


I'd been watching made in Chelsea you see (which is never a good idea when you're hanging because you feel like a thoroughly sick disgusting pathetic, poor, peasant of a person.) And all i wanted was a cuddle off Ollie Locke, so I went scarping around for the cheapest 5* luxurious hotel I could possibly find, I had a price range of about £70 for 2 nights.


By about 6'o clock my hangover has worn off and after realising I probably cant get two nights at the Mayfair for £70 and actually I was going up the weekend after for certain 21st so my London plan had fallen through. However in my hungover haze I got to thinking about hotels. If there's no place like home then why are we forking out as much as much as £31,725 a night for hotels. (I might add this is not any ordinary holiday inn but the most expensive room in the world in the Royal Villa, Grand Resort Lagonissi, Athens.)

(most expensive hotel room everrrrrr!!!!)

I have always loved a hotel. Even last weekend I went and stayed in a hotel in Bristol (where I live.) There's something about them that I just find intoxicating. The fact that you can call down to a nice Mr. Man who will happily hop up to your bedroom and grant your every wish, makes you feel like Rapunzel or Cinderella with her Godmother. If I won the lottery I always said I would stay in the most expensive hotel in Paris and get pissed on champagne in Dior and buy something ridiculous and wear it down the street.

(I'm thinking something along the lines of this hair furniture and all)

There is a sense of luxury and adventure and sex floating about the air. You never know who you're going to meet in a hotel and you feel like you're taking on a different persona for a while, no one knows your name, there are no cluttered reminders of mistakes you might have made but instead a beautifully polite blank canvas for you to make some more. If I had a fetish I think it would be for hotels.


I spent that entire evening as a woman obsessed. I'd even decided what I would have to eat if I was staying at the Savoy. One Particularly striking hotel, the Berkeley in Knightsbridge, has gained itself quite a name in the fashion world and so of course Miss. Thursday was in love and it certainly deserves a mention on the old bloggy.

(The pret-a-portea available at the Berkeley)

Any guest staying at the Berkeley can request, completely free, the use of the fashion trunk. This one item made me want to cry, it is a box full of vintage designer accessories from the likes of Dior, Chanel and Lacroix that guests are allowed to PUT ON AND GO OUTSIDE IN!!!!! Well they say it more eloquently than that but oh me oh my how incredible!!!! And frrrrreeeeeee? Sure beats the complimentary ginger biscuits in the Marriott. (The staff are even described as having twinkly eyes, they must hire fairies.)

(The Berkeley fashion trunk)

On my hunt for hotels to write about on the old bloggin I came across some pretty weird ones, all this diversity is making me want to have one of those cool magazine programs where me, Martha Thursday, goes around the world staying in crazy hotels and being filmed sleeping and complaining and being funny then it goes on more 4? Sound good?

(The Dog Park inn Idaho)

So after all this I have been left feeling very depressed and made me think of all things I'm not getting. I'm not getting to live in the Berkeley, more 4 doesn't want me to do a show for them, I've not won the lottery so I'm not going to Paris, I'm not getting my new year trip to Egypt any more and I'm not even getting my hungover planned trip to Chelsea!


But I am going to London, and I am staying in a hotel, and so in an attempt to make it seem like I'm not an ungrateful brat I will dedicate this blog to my friend's 21st birthday (which isn't actually for like over a month) let's be scandalous and use her name, Kari! (never second names though.) I hope this exempts me from getting her a present....


Anyway, as a final word use lastminute Top secret hotels.