london chic | The awkward turtle

“What’s that you say? You have a blog? Well join the line…”

Anyone can blog, even my mum, but some are convinced that it gives them some sort of special status. I tried to exploit this belief recently when I organised a day out to London Fashion Week dragging some friends in tow. The emphasis on my planned day was for free events, perhaps a glimpse of a few collections via a big outdoor screen designed to keep the riff-raff from muddying designer garments with our mediocrity. However even this, it seemed, was a big ask and inevitably we needed a pass to see anything of worth. One of my lovely friends, who has a penchant for blagging – one that I do not share – found out that if you were a blogger you could get a coveted pass. Her eyes lit up with the realisation that My friend has a blog, and sure enough she shoved me up to the Blogger’s desk to get us in. I knew I had no right being there but the cringe-worthy exchange had commenced:

“Erm, I’m a blogger and I was told to come here for a pass…”
“Right, do you have a business card?”
“No.”
“Do you have your site stats?”
(I was not aware at that point what that was) “No.”
“Well if you give me your site address I can have a look for you.”
“Okay…”
“What’s your blog about?”
“Er, food? writing mainly”
“Hmm. Well it should really be about fashion (duh). And you have to have had it for a year minimum (mine was 2 months old), or an average of 5,000 hits a month.”

Silence. We stared at eachother. I wanted the ordeal to be over but I knew there was no backing out now, all I could do to express my discomfort was grip my friend’s thigh behind me. She took a glance over my shoulder to judge my companions, they do say that a person should be judged by the company they keep. No doubt she found the sight of my poor friend Alex offensive; he had been an unsuspecting tag-a-long to the day’s events, and his idea of fashion consists of flip-flops (thongs) and shorts. Her verdict:

“Sorry. You can come back on the weekend when its open to the public.”

I saw a similar episode not too long after whilst queueing for London’s trendiest new restaurant of the week – going on month. We were one party away from the seating list and the woman in front was trying with everything at her disposal to get a table for dinner. Her desperation to enter was clear; at some point the line, “I’m a blogger, I’ll write you up if you let me in”, was dropped in at which point everyone within earshot held their breath to see what favours such a promise would elicit. The answer, nothing.

I felt suitably awkward on her behalf, only enhanced when moments later we found ourselves snaking back down the queue as there was no room in that inn.

A couple of weeks later I tried this same restaurant again. It involved an hour of queueing in the rain to no avail. During our hard time we got asked if anyone had given us an estimated waiting time, and as we looked into the face of our inquirers I realised we were staring at the face of the mum from Home Alone, Catherine O’Hara, and the fabulous wedding planning in Father of the Bride, Martin Short.

And the moral of the story: leave the blagging to your friends who know what they’re doing, don’t turn up at the hottest new restaurant on a Friday night, even celebrities from our childhood films can get turned away, and lastly, always carry a business card. That’s all folks!