The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is mentally scan myself, checking for any sneaky MS symptoms before stumbling my way to the shower.
Then it’s feeding the cat, flinging a couple of Weetabix at The Teenager, organising schoolbag/handbag, meds, coffee, make-up, to-do lists, washing up, sorting laundry, more coffee.
All pretty normal? A scene played out up and down the country?
Nope. Helena “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000” Christensen was recently plugging her latest lingerie collection and put her name to an entire article about underwear with some sage advice for us lesser mortals.
She suggests creating a ritual out of selecting and putting your underwear on by lighting a candle first, as ‘there’s something about the scent and the low flickering light that’s good for early starts.’ Bizarrely, she confesses she never has time to find matching socks or underwear, but finds it ‘inspiring’ to mix pieces. So that’s alright then.
Helena, love, it’s simple really. Ditch the diptych candles and hey presto, you’ll have time to find your matching socks.
Anyway, once you’ve successfully completed the tricky task of selecting your underwear, another person with too much time on their hands, Calgary Avansino (no, me neither) recently had a three page spread where she shares her breakfast smoothie recipe with the world.
The twenty ingredients include chia seeds, coconut water, baobab powder, bee pollen, lacuma powder, maca powder, frozen kale and half a courgette. Oh, and some mint leaves which she keeps a stock of in her freezer. No doubt she grows the stuff herself in her specially-designed herb garden.
She is beautifully photographed in her fabulous kitchen, hair perfect, designer dress and high-heeled shoes on, wrists laden with artfully-chosen jewellery and surrounded by rustic bowls of fruit and vegetables, a vast array of tubs and jars and a cute kid with silver shoes on.
Now, I have nothing against Helena promoting her underwear or Calgary plugging her website per se but what I do object to are the endless unattainable ‘lifestyles’ us normal women are bombarded with on a daily basis. Don’t these people know anything about real life? Most of us wake up worried about money, jobs, MS – not whether our housekeeper has re-stocked the candle supply or if we’ve run out of bee pollen….
p.s. Do tea-lights from IKEA count?