Last week I found myself unexpectedly perving over King Triton’s torso whilst watching The Little Mermaid II with my kids. Which was something of a surprise, even to myself. A cartoon character – who knew? As he waggled his way into shot, I was taken aback by the broadness of his chest, the abs definition, the slenderness of a waist that tantalisingly led the eye down to his thick, smooth…

tail. Oh.

Is it weird to wonder about sex with a merman, and a cartoon one at that? It feels odd to have (very minor) levels of arousal over someone who’s half fish and I’m annoyed at Disney for putting me in this position in the first place. Why did they have to draw him with the most buff upper body the cartoon world has ever seen? It’s just not on. Don’t make fantastical part-animals sexy is what I say. I never had this hot-under-the-collar problem with Mr Tumnus from Narnia.

Morally it feels a bit off, because surely sex with a half-animal is (trying to follow logic, here) a sort of half bestiality? Or even full bestiality, because really the part you’re “engaging with” most is the non-human part. You can very well kiss King Triton, and King Triton can very well honk your boobs with his human hands (this is how I imagine he shags – all whilst bellowing out a sea shanty), but when it comes down to it, you’re going to be shagging a fish.

I also feel bad because (in The Little Mermaid II) Triton is a white-bearded, protective and loving grandad, and so it’s a bit like fancying Santa. Except Santa with the body of Jason Momoa.

How did King Triton even get that ripped? I can imagine that upper body strength for a merman would have to be phenomenal, because effectively your legs have been replaced with a giant flipper, but still. There’s upper body strength and there’s the torso of a man who’s been lifting articulated lorries for the past ten years. And there ain’t any articulated lorries on the bottom of the ocean, I can tell you that for free.

(Actually there might be. It could have slipped off a sunken freight ship. And I suppose the mermaid community would only need one articulated lorry in their workout area. The MerGym. They could lift oil drums or boulders whilst waiting for the lorry lift, or use the resistance bands. Which would be made from those thick, shiny strips of seaweed.)

(Sorry, I’ve got an image in my head now, of all of the fitness fanatic merpeople hanging about in their outdoor gym, an underwater version of Muscle Beach. They’re all side-eyeing one another and drinking green protein shakes out of conch shells. Although: do merpeople drink? How could you drink liquid when you are quite literally surrounded by liquid? You’d open your mouth and all of the seawater would pour in – how would you selectively imbibe a particular liquid? I suppose you’d just have to use a straw.)

Anyway, sex with King Triton: it would be totally inappropriate. Even on a practical note, things aren’t plain sailing. Where is his willy? Could it be hidden beneath the scales of his tail, like a pop-up surprise? Or do merpeople have no reproductive organs? How do merpeople mate?

Wait. Google is my friend here.

Wow.

There are a LOT of theories. It’s mindblowing. People do know that mermaids aren’t real…don’t they? Because there seem to be thousands of mer-believers out there. Anyway, the two most popular theories (and I suppose only feasible theories when you think about it) are that the mermaid lays a mer-egg and the merman comes along and basically spunks over it, OR that they mate like a human, with the merman’s penis concealed in a sort of sheath, like a dolphin’s.

I feel queasy, for some reason. I think it’s the idea of being penetrated by a sheathed dolphinesque penis. Would it have scales on the actual shaft? Would the scales feel like sequins? Risky! You’d be absolutely in tatters down there. Unless your own vaginal passage was also scaled, in which case it might be somewhat protected, but then would the scales clash and catch on one another as the penis was withdrawn? What if the sequinned penis became trapped inside the sequinned tunnel? There’d be trouble then!

Do you think there’s an A&E for mermaids? I like to think that Disney would have that all drawn out – the octopus receptionist with her many telephones, the swordfish surgeon with his scalpel nose.

“Ah, King Triton! What can I do for you this time, Your Royal Highness? Sequin penis stuck inside a sequin vagina again? You need to be more careful! Nurse Pufferfish, just roll them over this way, that’s right, easy does it – and fetch the KY jelly!”

Oh, I’ve gone off on a real tangent with this post. I only meant to ask around and see who else thought King Triton was hot. Which, incidentally, I have already done on Instagram but with slightly disappointing results; King Triton was not top of the hot-cartoons charts. Aladdin cropped up quite a bit, and also the general from Mulan, but I think that the most popular cartoon crush was Robin Hood from Disney’s Robin Hood. Who happens to be – get this – a fox!

What is it about anthropomorphised animals? A few people also said “adolescent Simba” from The Lion King, but more people willingly and enthusiastically aired their fancies for the beast from Beauty and the Beast. But only AS the beast, mind; he seems to lose his sex appeal when he becomes human again. Apparently.

Giving it some (extended) thought, the beast is pretty broad across the chest. Nice and stocky. I kind of get the attraction. Moody, damaged, good head of hair, massive castle with full staff including a wardrobe that talks. But Robin Hood the fox? He of the smug smile and overly-confident swagger? Nah, sorry. I’m lost on that one…

The post King Triton: Hot But Not A Fox appeared first on A Model Recommends.

Here are the June favourites, which means that I’m finally getting there with my admin catch-up! I’m going to keep this blurb short and sweet because quite a lot of the video is taken up by a review of some “period pants” and I’m doing a whole other post on those delightful things. And I don’t want to repeat myself. (I’m trying to be very efficient with my time this week because things have been so hectic. The only saving grace is that the weather hasn’t been that brilliant, because there’s nothing I hate more than being trapped inside with my laptop when the sun is shining.)

(Yes I know about those weird box things that you can put your laptop into to shade the screen from the sun, but honestly that would be one step away from wearing knee-pads to do the weeding. I’m just not ready to be that practical.)

So June Favourites; an amazingly light-but-effective neck cream, a powerful eye cream, a hydrating foundation (spoiler alert: you already know about that one, I’m all out of sync here) and some lightly-tinted lip balms that are great for low-low-key makeup days.

Enjoy – I’ll be back with the period pants. Even though the phrase period pants does make me want to be slightly sick in my mouth…

Period Pants IGTV

Clinique Triple Pop Lip Balms here*

Kiehl’s Powerful Strength Line-Reducing Eye Cream here*

Prai Night Cream for Neck and Decollatage here*

Estee Lauder Futurist Foundation review

Oskia Nutri-Bronze serum here*

Bare Minerals Complexion Rescue Radiant Tint here* (sidenote on this: I like the glow, but it’s not the best sunscreen to use under makeup! It’s just the one I’ve been using recently mixed with the Oskia drops.) 

On my eyes, the pink tones from the Pat McGrath Golden Opulence palette here*

The post 5 Beauty Favourites: June 2020 appeared first on A Model Recommends.

I was going to order some little vintage side tables last week but the delivery time, from the Netherlands, was estimated at 4-5 weeks. Considering that the tables are already made – they are secondhand – what in heaven’s name mode of transport could possible take 4-5 weeks? I could construct my own tables in 4-5 weeks, whittling the frames from wood that I have painstakingly collected from the garden and dried out in the airing cupboard. In 4-5 weeks I could do a crash course in glass blowing and make the bloody tabletop!

At the very least I could hire a van and drive over to the Netherlands myself, and back, and that would only take two days. In fact: Google Maps informs me that it’s about eight hours one way and so I could feasibly do it in a day if I mainlined Coca Cola and didn’t stop for a wee.

What transport method could possibly take 4-5 weeks then? I’m finding this hard to fathom. Let’s say it goes by boat, which I’m guessing is the slowest way, how long could a crossing from the Netherlands possibly take? Is it going by rowing boat? Canoe? Pedalo? Is the boat the sort of boat that goes around the houses (or the coastline), picking up other bits and pieces from other ports before finally, thankfully, sliding wearily into the harbour at its final destination? Is it a bit like when you agree to share a minibus to go home from a wedding and a ten minute journey ends up taking three hours because you have to go to Leytonstone via Putney, Notting Hill, Maida Vale and then Putney again because Jeffrey and Toni passed out drunk and missed their stop? Is it like that? Does the boat go all the way up to the east coast of Scotland to pick up some huge crates of frozen organic salmon, and while it’s in the harbour all of the furniture from the Netherlands can be heard grumbling from below deck?

‘Fuck’s sake, Coffeetable. I told you we should have gone in the van with the bedstead and the floor lamps. Sideboard Bob will be officially an antique by the time we get to Shoreditch.’

‘It was cheaper this way, Brass Barcart, I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to say…’

More Google Map research shows that I could actually walk to Amsterdam in 79 hours. How mad is that? I’m guessing that with two solid brass side tables strapped to my back it might take just a bit longer to walk back again, but still, I reckon I’d do the whole thing in less than two weeks. For free. There is actually a collect in person option, so maybe I’ll surprise them.

‘Hi there, I’m here to collect the brass and glass Jean Charles side tables?’

‘Oh hi, yeah, they’re right here ready to go. Can I help you with them into your van?’

‘Nah, no worries. I’m on foot.’

‘On…foot?’

‘Yeah, it was only ten days delivery time rather than your 28-35 days and I thought I’d save on postage. If you can just hoist them up onto my back there and pull this dubious-looking abseiling strap around to secure them, that’d be great.’

LOL.

The only transport method I can think of, where it would legitimately take that long to send something from the Netherlands to Somerset, is this: sparrows. It’s a bit of a James and the Giant Peach scenario, but bear with. You tie a load of sparrows onto the tables using fine pieces of thread and when you have enough sparrows the tables lift into the air. They all fly, ever so ever so slowly, across land and sea and land again, but they don’t know where the hell Somerset is and end up in Barcelona. By then, some of the sparrows have perished and so the Spanish branch of Overpriced MidCentury Classics has to catch the tables using a man with a hand glider, attach more sparrows whilst in mid-air and send them off again in the right direction.

Another method slow enough to take 4-5 weeks would be by magical van. A van that can do all sorts of amazing things – turn into a musical fairground carousel, become a submarine, change anyone who drives it into a talking squirrel – but can’t drive in a straight line. Magic van can only drive in ever-widening circles, which means that the end destination has to be carefully calculated using the on-board Spirolometer and extra time has to be allowed for all of the pissing about the van has to do before actually getting to the place it needs to go. It wastes the first week driving around and around the bicycle lanes of Amsterdam, much to everyone’s annoyance, and once it gets to the UK the magic bus spends a good while doing both the North Circular and then the M25. Clockwise.

Give me strength. Literally. I’m setting off to get the tables tomorrow and the last time I walked more than ten miles I twisted my ankle…

Photo by David Tomaseti on Unsplash

The post Don’t Bloody Bother, I’ll Pick Them Up Myself. appeared first on A Model Recommends.

I completely forgot to post up my May Favourites video and when I gave it a quick once over to see what it was all about, because May feels like a century ago, it was like travelling back through time. Travelling back to an era when I hadn’t hacked off my own hair with paper scissors, when I could still fit into my shorts, when I didn’t have a problem with beard and moustache growth. (See my Instagram page.)

Oh, life seemed so much more carefree, back in May!** You didn’t have to make up excuses not to see people, the doorbell never rang. It was zoom this and zoom that, you could mute yourself and carry on typing emails or you could pretend that turning the camera off was an accident – “oops, sorry everyone, I’m still a dinosaur with these things – can anyone see me?” – so that you could eat lunch during a client meeting.

(**Apart from the obvious health hazards, impending economic disaster and stressful homeschooling situations.)

Now it’s all “let’s meet up for garden drinks” and you have to de-beard yourself and get dressed. I got halfway around Sainsbury’s the other day before I realised that I hadn’t even done up the buttons on my shirt properly and that my baps were proudly presenting themselves in all of their manky-brassiered glory.

It’s a (re)learning curve, this social skills thing.

Anyway, here’s the May Favourites. It’s going to be closely followed by June Favourites in the next couple of days, which will make you feel as though I’m messing with your head, but it has to be done because if it isn’t recorded on here for posterity then it never happened. One day this blog will be an important historical research, mark my words! Few people have kept up an online documentation of their life with such dedication and attention to detail. OK, quite a few have, but apart from them, not many. I’ll be like the Samuel Pepys of the 21st Century, except I’m writing about face creams and social distancing mishaps rather than great fires and plagues. We’re virtually the same guy.

Products mentioned are below – interesting that the Futurist foundation was a favourite, I’d forgotten that I’d popped that in! You can read the full and proper review of it here if you’re interested in more info.

Hush Shorts, £45 here*

Estee Lauder Futurist Hydra Rescue Foundation, £36 here*

Charlotte Tilbury Flawless Bronzer here*

Guerlain Terracotta Nude, £38 here* – I didn’t realise that this only came in one shade. It states “universal” but honestly I don’t know how far that would stretch, it’s pretty subtle on me and I’m fair-medium. Sorry, I should have checked this before posting.

Real Techniques Powder Brush, £8.84*: https://amzn.to/3djqffl Pixi Eye Palette Natural Beauty, £24 here*

Sanctuary Moisture Miracle Body Lotion Extra Rich, £10 here*

Rimmel 60 Seconds Shine Nail Polish, £3.49 here*

Curel Foaming Face Wash, £12.50 here*

My shirt is a really old one from H&M.

Necklace is Jennifer Meyer here*

The post May Favourites: It’s Basically Time Travel appeared first on A Model Recommends.

Let’s get down to business, in the words of Captain Li Shang from Mulan. (Can you tell I’ve overdone it on the Disney+ channel binging? There’s no Disney stone left unturned in this house. As well as devouring the classics, we’ve watched every prequel and sequel, some of which, quite frankly, should never have been made. Of particular direness is The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, a weak coming-of-age story involving Ariel’s annoying teenage daughter and an underwater villain wearing what appears to be a latex Roland Mouret dress.) (Sidenote: how buff is King Triton? I actually blushed when he tailed his way into shot, not least because he’s now a grandad and it feels inappropriate to stare. He has a tiny merman waist and then this HUGE, ripped chest! I don’t know, it got me going anyway. Niche but true.)

But back to the business of brilliant beauty and a much-belated foundation review. You know how I love my dewy, low-key bases and Estée Lauder’s Futurist Hydra Rescue was an instant hit with its bouncy texture and healthy, radiant finish. If your skin is dry then you’ll love it – it feels thirst-quenching, it looks thirst-quenching and it doesn’t sit horribly in fine lines or wrinkles. (In fact any but the oiliest of skins will find it gives a gorgeous, understated dewiness.) And if you hate full or matte coverage and want a natural finish that’ll still manage to even out skintone and cover up minor blemishes and bits of redness then this will be entirely your bag. It has the comforting plumpness of a tinted moisturiser but the coverage of a foundation – ideal summertime makeup.

(Or anytime makeup, really; you can build this up really well if you prefer a fuller coverage and it sheers out nicely if you mix it with a little bit of moisturiser.)

Let’s go straight in for the close-ups – here’s the before and after:

You can see that it’s not a blank-it-all-out foundation, but it gives a general evenness in tone, knocks back dark circles and leaves the skin with a juicy sheen. (Unfortunately it does nothing for my side-tache problem, but obviously that requires more drastic action. Something sharp and/or pointy.)

I’ve only applied one quick layer of the Futurist Hydra Rescue Moisturizing Makeup here – one thing to note is that it is very moisturising and so if you wanted to build it up to a fuller coverage then you’d have to deal with the extra moisture. If you have very dry skin then that’s all fine and dandy but for anyone else then it’s a bit of a convoluted way of getting high coverage – if it’s blemish obliteration you’re after, but still want glow, then I’d opt for something like Dior’s Forever Skin Glow*.

But with a sensible, medium-coverage application of the Futurist foundation there’s no residue left behind on the skin – it just feels comfortable. Surely that’s foundation finish perfection? In terms of lasting effects I get good coverage for the majority of the day with only a tiny bit of slippage on oilier areas – for me that’s the nose and chin. Again, something like Dior’s Forever would have better longevity, but I wouldn’t get that same plumptious feel and ultra-fresh, informal kind of look.

Browse my foundation reviews

Estée Lauder’s Futurist gets a huge tick from me – it’s such a welcome addition to their foundation line-up. There are twenty shades (of which six are light, six are medium and eight are dark) the tube packaging with the pump dispenser is lightweight, travel-friendly and non-messy and there’s a built-in broad spectrum sunscreen (UVA and UVB protection) with SPF45.

You can find Estée Lauder Futurist Hydra Rescue Moisturizing Makeup online here* for £36 as well as at Feel Unique here* and Selfridges here*. I use shade 2N1.

If you’re looking for the same dewy glow but slightly less coverage, I’d highly recommend Clinique’s Even Better Glow – you can find my full review here.

The post Foundation Review: Estée Lauder Futurist Hydra Rescue appeared first on A Model Recommends.

I am writing this whilst leaning back – reasonably heavily – on my cat cushion. Not a feather-stuffed, velvet-covered cat cushion, mind: it’s a real life cat cushion. Living and breathing. Slightly more supportive than an inanimate one, if you must know. And the constant, heavy purring is incredibly relaxing – those vibrations, along with his occasional squirmy rearranging of the limbs, provide a sort of low-key massage chair effect.

Not at all like one of those massage chairs that you get at some hairdressing salons or nail bars. Where on earth do they get those monstrosities from? I don’t think I’ve ever felt safe in one, let alone relaxed. The clanky rollers that move up and down beneath the pleather surface, the “fingers” that knead at your shoulders…it’s like being massaged by Edward Scissorhands, except that he’s doing it crouching on your back wearing rollerskates.

Anyway, I don’t know why the cat has suddenly taken to squeezing himself behind me as I sit at my desk – it’s as though he’s developed some sort of squashing fetish. The more I lean back, the more he loves it. It’s all very odd and I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with it, despite the fact that it feels really nice. I just worry about his little bones, or that he might suffocate. But still, he jumps in and crawls into the space behind my back and then pokes at me with his paws until I lean back and exert some pressure…

I’ve been at my desk a lot. I know you probably think I’ve been off having a lovely old time, but I have been working. Just not online. No checking Instagram every ten minutes, no Twitter notifications or Youtube alerts: just good old-fashioned typing away on Microsoft Word, typing like it’s 1999.

I say “working” but I use that word loosely because my brain is still very firmly in lockdown mode, despite the country starting to open back up for business. My brain just won’t seem to exit itself from the emergency energy saving programme it entered back in March; whenever something pressing needs to be done, it replies telepathically with oh, don’t worry about it. Life’s too short. There are bigger fish to fry. And other clichés. A rolling stone gathers no moss. 

That last one wasn’t really relevant but it’s always been a favourite. Mainly because I don’t fully understand it. Why would you want to gather moss? It always sounds a bit like some stuffy aunt saying to you, when you’re young and all you want to do is go to Bali and get shitfaced on a beach with semi-naked hot guys wearing shark-tooth pendants, “oh, all of that gadding about! You’ll never be able to collect a load of rubbish porcelain dolls and put them in a dusty glass-fronted cabinet in your lounge if you carry on travelling to exotic places! Where’s your ambition, girl? A rolling stone gathers no moss! Don’t you want to stay in one place and know the same set of thirty-three people for your entire life? How will you ever know Maureen from number sixty-four’s business if you keep up this relentless penchant for discovering the wider world?”

Or something.

I had some notes on what the kids have been up to, because this is supposed to be a life update. They have been making little things from modelling clay (an elephant, a toadstool garden, pictured above – guess who actually made them both? Thank you, yes, I know they are brilliant), making dens around the garden, populating the dens with every single toy they can find and then leaving them out overnight to go soggy and finally, bringing stuff inside that should be outside. Leaves. Stones. Snails, dead or alive.

I feel as though this is a very particular parenting era that we are experiencing right now, with its own set of rules and quirks. It changes every week, but I think I could sum up the current era (daughter: just turned five, son: three and a half) with the following headings: inflexibility, warm hands and continuing exhaustion.

Inflexibility. There is suddenly a real lack of wriggle room when it comes to negotiations. I find it so frustrating, trying to get two small, loud people to do stuff they don’t want to do that I frequently resort to a) making threats I later don’t have the energy to uphold (“I will take all of the toys from your bedroom and put them in a bin bag if you don’t stop whacking her with the space robot!”) and b) telling minor fibs. Usually my little lies involve something being closed or something needing batteries. “Can we watch the iPad?” “No, it needs batteries.” “Can you make us a den in the living room?” “No, the living room’s…closed.”

Warm hands. I’m trying to appreciate the feeling of small, warm hands in mine. Because my daughter is now almost as tall as me, seemingly, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to pick her up. She’s just suddenly quite long and unwieldy. It’s like trying to walk along carrying an olive tree, or, I don’t know, a small hat stand. A clothes airer. Everything’s angular, rangy. Limbtastic. And so I know that soon I’ll be weeping over that poem – how does it go?

One day you will carry them on your hip then set them down
And never pick them up that way again

(If you ever want to have a maudlin old weep then read the whole thing – it’s called The Last Time. In fact I’ll type it out below for you. Hankies at the ready.)

So yes, even though she’s still grabbing my face for kisses, and the three year-old still likes to be picked up and carried now and then, and both of them still curl their little warm hands into my palm when we walk along, I know that they are growing up faster than I can process and that I must remember every tiny detail. Perfectly round tummies sticking out of the gap between outgrown pyjama tops and bottoms, messy, sweaty night-hair, tiny arms that seem as fragile as bird bones when you rub them with sunscreen, mispronounced words (favourite of the week is Trinoceros, which I personally think is an excellent replacement for Triceratops), the instantly-recognisable little call of “Mummy? Mummy?” from up the stairs, the spilt drinks and dropped food, the theme tune to World Kitchen on CBeebies (every day at noon on lockdown, the soundtrack to our luncheons), the very particular bedtime routines…

Continuing Exhaustion. My final defining characteristic of this particular life era: ongoing, relentless exhaustion. Sometimes I try to look back on the baby years and work out whether they were blissfully relaxing in comparison, or horrendously tiring. Maybe as things get easier, and you get more sleep, you become spoilt and you think you’re more tired, but on the other hand, babies are pretty low-maintenance in comparison to small children. You feed them, you change their nappies, you (eventually) get them to sleep, but for the majority of the day you can manage to do stuff like make a cup of tea, fold some laundry, write a few emails, and you can do it all whilst the baby stares at a shadow on the wall and catches invisible butterflies and drools on itself. Not possible with kids. Maybe things change, but at the moment, 5+3, there’s a window of approximately eight minutes when they will quietly and enjoyably play and then all hell breaks loose. And if hell isn’t breaking loose then someone is asking a question, repeatedly, with exactly the same intonation and rhythm, over and over again until someone answers, and quite often it’s not even a question it’s just a statement phrased like a question, which is irritating and incorrect at the best of times but when it’s on robotic repeat for over thirty seconds it’s easy just to absolutely lose your mind:

“Mummy he put lego in my ear? Mummy? He put lego in my ear? Mummy he put lego in my ear? Mummy? Mummy he put lego in my ear?”

But then in the quiet moments, you miss that incessant background noise, it’s as though all of the life has been sucked out of the room. The sound of a dripping tap is suddenly mournful, rain upon the window panes just feels a bit empty. You sip on your tea/read your paper/pick dirt from under your nails with a butter knife/insert any other enjoyable activity, and the silence is almost deafening. And you think to yourself, ah, isn’t it lovely to have a house filled with kids’ noises, and then one of them comes in and clangs a metal spoon along the radiator and you almost self-combust with the ferocity of your conflicted emotions.

I’ll leave you on that deep and uncharacteristically profound note. Oh and here’s the poem:

The Last Time (author unknown)

From the moment you hold your baby in your arms you will never be the same

You might long for the person you were before
When you had freedom and time
And nothing in particular to worry about

You will know tiredness like you never knew it before
Days will run into days that are exactly the same
Full of feedings and burping
Nappy changes and crying
Whining and fighting
Naps or a lack of naps
It might seem like a never-ending cycle

But don’t forget…

There is a last time for everything
There will come a time when you will feed your baby for the very last time
They will fall asleep on you after a long day
And it will be the last time you ever hold your sleeping child

One day you will carry them on your hip then set them down
And never pick them up that way again
You will scrub their hair in the bath for one last time
And from that day on they will want to bathe alone

They will hold your hand to cross the road
Then will never reach for it again
They will creep into your room at midnight for cuddles
And it will be the last night you ever wake to this

One afternoon you will sing “the wheels on the bus” and do all the actions
Then never sing them that song again

They will kiss you goodbye at the school gate
The next day they will ask to walk to the gate alone

You will read a final bedtime story and wipe your last dirty face
They will run to you with arms raised for the very last time.

The thing is, you won’t even know it’s the last time
Until there are no more times. And even then, it will take you a while to realize.

So while you are living in these times, remember there are only so many of them and when they are gone, you will yearn for just one more day of them.
For one last time.

The post Life Update: The Squashing Fetish appeared first on A Model Recommends.