I'm sew pathetic

My modest New Year's resolutions mostly involve learning how to operate the sewing machine my parents bought me for Christmas. My fear of sewing machines began at school, when we were instructed to make 'Maurice The Monkey' - a sinister wall-hanging organizer with a leering simian face. My needlework teacher cheerily told me that using a machine was easy - 'just like driving a car.' As I was 12 at the time, I was so freaked out by the idea of driving a sewing machine at 100 miles an hour down a motorway that I haven't touched one since.

It's sitting under my feet as I type this, being all sewing machiney, forever linked with the ghost of Maurice. But I know I have to get over this. I'm 37, and I'm scared of sewing. I've written a book about sewing, such is my admiration for those who can get behind the wheel of a souped up Singer and crank out some top quality place mats. I love all that post-modern hipster crafty lady bollocks where girls in horn rimmed glasses make tea cosies with FUCK written on them and sell them to other girls in horn rimmed glasses who make coasters with CUNT written on them. It's great! So why can't I do it?

Well I'm just going to have to learn, out of necessity. You see, since squeezing a human being out of my own tea cosy, my body is roughly the shape of a fat egg timer and I can't fit into skirts anymore. The waistlines ride up to my boobs, and the hemlines dangle hopelessly around my upper thighs causing a bottleneck of pure lard in all the wrong places and a full moon whenever I bend over. It's not a good look. So it has to be done. I'm going to get a pattern and some scissors and some 'thread' or whatever it's called and get that sewing machine out of its box. I just hope I don't crash it into a wall or get caught for reckless winding of a bobbin.

THINGS I DON'T LIKE THIS WEEK

Simon Cowell
Earthquakes


That is all.