Rip Her to Shreddies...

"Christ on a bike! Could this broadband speed *be* any slower???"

The Girl With a One Track Mind is already at the laptop and she's barely even started her bowl of Shreddies. "And to what do we owe the dubious pleasure of your fresh-from-the-boudoir, barely clad state of wanton slatternliness, oh infinitely patient one?" I ask, running the sartorial ruler over Abbie's nightshirt, hairnet, baggy socks and slippers ensemble. She's also wearing a pair of flesh coloured tights regularly patterened with tan-coloured spots - either that or she's been 'bumping into things' with quite extraordinary precision or sunbathing beneath an extremely large colander. "Can't you see? That's *exactly* the point!!??" Abbie wails, pouring another liberal slug of vodka over her breakfast ceeral. "I can't get dressed until I've consulted Goop or the Zoe Report, can I???"

"Ah, Goop - I know him. Seen him on the telly; mincing little Oriental fella with the pointy hair and glasses," announces a still yawning Stray Photon. He plonks a freshly poured pint of Strangely Brown Ale and a piping hot mug of Bovril onto the table and proceeds to make stereotypical slitty eyed and buck-toothed Chinaman faces in a remarkably non-PC manner. "Or am I getting him mixed up with that Richard Hammond chap again?" Stray stretches expansively then goes back to solving his inner television presenter conundrum. "No, Abs", is talking about Goop - the new fashion advice website set up by that American actress - you know the one? I was reading about it in the Ffestinyog Ffashion Ffolio ("The definitive guide to what the young Welshman is wearing") just the other day. Lovely looking lass - well, she was until I'd given her a Salvador Dali moustache, a nose ring and a rather unsavoury array of boils and pimples - lithe, lissom, blonde - married to that gurning idiot from Coldplay...

"Palmtree!!" exclaims Photon triumphantly. "It's trow, actually Stray, not tree..." Abbie corrects him. "Sorry Abs, so it is. Anyway, what's this Gwyneth Palmtrow doing setting up a fashion advice website ? I mean, surely she's got better things to do - like learning how to speak properly and keeping her husband fed and watered? Hungry job, I should imagine, ridding the world of famine and putting an end to global poverty. And she could surely put a bit more time and thought into naming her kids. What was that ridiculous thing she came up with for the first one...? "Apple." "Nah, you're alright Abs, I'll stick with the Bovril thanks very much... And while we're on the subject, that Zoe Report - she could do with a good feeding up herself. I've seen xylophones with wore muscle tone... I like something I can get my hands on me, none of this flibberty-gibbety wasting away to size zero mallarkey..." Clearly inflamed, Stray slouches over to the flatscreen and turns on the Breakfast News. (I keep telling him to put some ointment on it, but will he listen?)

"Here, Abs, you could do worse than the pretty smock thing that nice young Katie Silverton is wearing," Stray suggests, trying to be helpful. "Not so sure about the spangly pinnafore and hobnail boots, I'll grant you..." Abbie's silence speaks volumes. "At last! it's finally opened the page. Now, what do you think boys?" Stray and I join Abs in a huddle around the laptop. "Hmmm, I don't know about you Mort, but I'd certainly give Ms. Palmtree one. Not so sure about yours though..." he says, squinting at what is either a sideways on picture of Zoe Report or a kaftan on a pitchfork wearing a curly blonde wig. We're soon despatched back to our pews for being "unhelpful" as Abbie frantically scrolls though the websites for inspiration.

"So Abs, what does the oracle have to say?" I ask, wondering what on earth has possessed Kate Silverton to cover her lower portions and much of the BBC Breakfast sofa with a what appears to be a large, shapeless black table cloth. Has she converted to Islam, perhaps? "Well, Gwyneth seems to think you can't go wrong with the little black number and she's *dead* keen on a nifty little capelet thingy...a *snip* at $2,400. Whereas Zoe Report has a very nice line in shredded tunics, tank tops and dresses in her "Rip Her to Shreds" collection.....oh, decisions, decisions, decisions...." Abs is soon away off upstairs in search of the garden shears, leaving Stray and I alone to ponder the laptop and Kate Silverton's decolletage.

"Oh well," says Stray, "at least it keeps her mind off the rising tide of right wing extremism around the globe..." and goes back to his Bovril mug.


xxx
Mort