The Stylised Guide to Being a Hallow(i)eener.

Growing up in Greece, Halloween seemed like a really exotic thing, people "abroad" got to do. I remember staring at this borderline 'urban legend' occasion happening on the bulky glass screen of our TV ( I would have said flat screen but who am I kidding! Holler mid-twenties, cue to self pity filled sobbing over my FIVE white hairs, but I digress). Every October, while I sat in my boring "winter clothes", children abroad would dress up as witches and skeletons so intimidating that grown ups would bribe them with "candy" to ensure their safety.
Fast forward to 2006, I may have not been a child but I was on British turf freezing my arse off and missing the shit out of those inverted commas snuggly caressing the words Winter Clothes. But I was also in a land where Halloween was real! At the time, I lived in a house of four and a half residents, three and a half out of which found my foreign excitement hilarious, but I was determined to go ALL OUT. I was going to be what I thought was a very original Corpse Bride (which of course Unbeknown to me was a really popular costume) . I bought a white dress which, a flower crown and a lot of face paint for my housemate Hayley to draw what we set out to look like a snake but ended up resembling a penis coming out of my eye. The result was, I thought, marvellous but upon descending our semi's stairs in a "walking down the deadly isle" manner, I stumbled across... a cute fairy, a SEXY witch, an ancient Egyptian woman and someone who just had brown contact lenses in... wait, what?! what's scary about any of that?! And then it dawned on me (I'm fairly sure this discovery does not pale to the penicillin but you know, that's up to your own interpretation) There are Multiple Types of Halloweeners!!!!! (enter horrified emoji here).

So, without further ado, here to help you sort out your Halloween identity crisis, we present...

click on this, it's a vital link for the smooth progression of this post..

                        THE STYLISED GUIDE TO BEING A HALLOWEENER                             

• THE SEXY CAT 

(the focal point of the outfit is the word SEXY. Cat could be replaced by witch, pumpkin and other variation which my brain is currently failing to retrieve)

Usually, said Halloweener is clad in much less than pictured above and is posing in a slightly more serious manner.

Like this

or, this

This role applies to you if: you want to be slutty without being judged upon it. Think of the 31st of each October as a free pass for you inner slut.

For this look you will need: A LOT of eyeliner, a little lipstick, and a small selection of flesh baring clothes.

• THE SERIOUS ALL-OUTER

(The key word here is SERIOUS. There's no tricking those serious Halloweeners)

If you take Halloween seriously, then this category is for you. Not toying around with extra inches of bosom on show and lack of artistic effort, this halloweener is set out to scare you. 

BOO!

For this look you will need: A LOT of face paint (or just make up as illustrated above), a lot of time and a damn good face cleanser.

• THE NO MUSS, NO FUSS-er

(The serious all-outers, arch enemy)

Halloween doesn't excite you the least but you've been invited to some party and your friends have been on your case about dressing up. You just grab the cheapest accessory you can find, chuck it over your normal clothes and once grilled just say, "what? Pandas are scary! I have a rare mental condition that makes me feel like bamboo, nothing is more threatening to bamboo than pandas". Done. 

For this look you will need: ANY slightly unconventional head wear/ coloured contact lenses

• THE ADORABLE VANITY LACKING FUN LOVER

(I am biased towards this kind, as I identify myself with this awesome lot)

If you think of Halloween as the time to dress ridiculously and have fun behind Maoam Teeth and and a fake moustache then you are my kind of Halloweener. Usually my outfits include drawn on chest hair  and a complete inability to grab the bartender's attention which is obviously captivated by the sexy kittens. I pride myself on looking so ridiculous that even my friends get repelled. 

My archives are full of disguises that could potentially drive me to eternal spinsterhood, but since I have done well in finding a paramour that appreciates the ridiculousness that Halloween brings out of me (who am I kidding, lets just say call things what they are and admit it's any old Thursday), here are some of my all time favourite costumes. (Deddie Mercury, as witnessed above and below)

Glam rock Jesus

Super Mario's Ghost

Which proved to be very popular with the mummies

...I can('t) see why

I am trying to figure out if I was posing in a "sexy way" here *enter vomit noises*

Yeaaaahhh... I like my facial hair... and holiday appropriate cross dressing apparently!

For this look you will need: fake moustaches, to squash your vanity and probably some vodka brought from home because no one will notice you are waiting to be served.

To sum everything up, I will present you with a picture from my first ever Halloween, each of us was a different type of Halloweener. Can you spot which one's which? (DUH!)

Which type of Halloweener are YOU?!

Daphne.

P.S

(my ultimate Halloween costume,is to be able to grow a penis for one night only to go as THIS - nsfw-)

The Stylised guide to putting the 'IN' in INSOMNIA.

Put as non dramatically as I possibly can from the land of the constantly awake, insomnia is the David to my Goliath, the Wile E. Coyote to my Road Runner, the Lex Luther to my Superman, the Cain to my Abel, those unbeatable pixelated turtles that would never die to my Super Mario. Or, cutting a long story short, my main arch rival. The way I see it, my eyes and brain have some sort of love-hate relationship going on, with the latter occasionally becoming the more prominent of feelings. Brain will bully Eyes (capitalising because I've anthropomorphised them and those are now their names!) to stay open by attacking them with every single anxiety inducing thought I've ever tried to suppress within its chambers.

To paint you a word picture, this is how insomnia works: You go to sleep, nice and early(ish), get semi comfortable, set an alarm, close your eyes and.... nada. You count sheep, read, watch something, turn the light off, count sheep, turn the light back on, sit up, go get some water, come back, turn the light off, try to sleep, turn the light on, make a hot drink, drink it, look at the clock, panic over the lack of hours to sleep, toss and turn, panic a little more, get up, take INSANE pictures of yourself in an attempt to not think about sleeping... 

...then laugh hysterically over said picture for a good fifteen minutes until you realise there's now only three hours left until you have to BE in work, get up in a panic, cut your fringe into something that resembles a misshapen foot that sticks up on the right due to a very persistent cow's lick the existence of  which you obviously forgot in your delirious state (in my defence, it was only one time, it was not a big deal and it happens to everyone), give up on getting any rest, have a paddy, cry, have a shower, get dressed, drink coffee which will make you feel both more awake and like you've just been electrocuted, and go about with your day feeling itchy, depressed and bipolar. 

So, what happens if R.E.M to you is more of a band that sings about how everybody hurts sometimes and less of a biological function of the brain, and you really want to avoid your new boyfriend finding you looking like this at 5am?

(Photographic evidence of real life events.Oh YEAH, new boyfriend is a lucky man!hahahahahaha)

Without further ado, we hereby present you...

*drumroll*

The Stylised Guide to Putting the "IN" in INSOMNIA. 

Given that here at St.D (get it?!) we're a pretty thoughtful bunch of people (it's just me but we'll tackle schizophrenia on a different day - future employers, I'm not schizophrenic, hire me! - me too! - and me! - don't forget about me!) we (I) decided to split the solutions in categories. 

• The Medical Approach. [it's a link, click on it]

(ok so the link was a bit pointless but lets move on) 

This category is for the no-bullshit types. One pill, boom! No moping around, going stir crazy while you're desperately trying to overcome a jetlag that's outstayed its welcome. (call me patronising, but them no bullshit types are usually jet setters!). However, before you jump to the seemingly obvious conclusion of not reading further because this sounds pretty simple, take a moment and listen... other than the blatant Heath Ledger(aka you could die)phenomenon, a generous amount of sleeping pills could enable some highly regretable behaviour. For example, I happen to have an elderly gentleman friend who once decided, after travelling back and forth between the continents, to take a couple of jetlag squashing pills. Happy in the notion that he would soon be sound asleep, he decided to text myself and a mutual friend in order to wish us something along the lines of 'goodnight'. However, being high on said pills, he misspelled 'goodnight' into a fairly long sentence about how he would allow another mutual acquaintance to perform some rather unorthodox sexual stuff to him if she put the right price tag on the act. Thankfully, as good friends, all we did was type "hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha" a carpel tunnel inducing amount of times, screenshoot the shit out of the textual exchange and bring it up in conversation on a daily basis. Unable to erase our memories, the elderly gentleman has learnt his lesson and will now only try to combat insomnia with ineffective concoctions of several 'sleepy time' teas.

• The Spiritual Approach. [it's another link, click on it]

I don't really know how to deal with you lot. Pray, meditate, keep a vow of silence. Send feedback.

• The Stay Fashionable Approach [surely you know the drill with all the links by now,right]

Despite earning the largest chunk of my bonsai income through fashion writing for multiple publication that have bought my claim that I know my shit, I can hereby confess that the origins of most trends are to me as foreign as a plate of live edible squid* (*or, to be less of a knob, very foreign). What I do know however is that the fashion world seemed to be feeling a bit lethargic a few seasons ago and as a result unleashed a plethora of silky sleepwear that got branded as daywear. And while fashion critics across the world praised Sophia Coppola's daring pyjama clad appearance at the Met Gala, us insomniacs witnessed the event through slanted, sleep deprived eyes and between yawns managed to breathe a sigh of relief. Finally! Falling asleep in public after days and nights of exhaustion has become fashionable.

And while Sophia (we're totally on a first name basis) opted for a slinky Mark Jacobs design, H&M got a bit of a Marni bedtime version and most fashionistas paid their dues(cash)to Zara variations of the aforementioned design, we decided to take it a step forward and combine fading trends with brand new ones. Pyjama, meet pastels and flannel. This heartbroken hedgehog adorned ensemble has got our firm seal of approval. So for future reference, fellow insomniacs, BE PREPARED. Don't miss the chance to catch those hard to come by zzz's whenever they enter your proximity.

• Whether it's while you're shopping :

• while you're working: 

• while you're taking some culture in:

• while you're eating with friends: 

• and even when you're indulging in a bit of an instagram narcissism 

#WIWT

You're welcome and Bonne Nuit 

Daphne And The Deadly Chavs. (defrosted and reheated)

A year or so ago I was asked by a friend to write a story for his blog. I recently saw my old housemate and while reminiscing about the good old days of too much afternoon champagne and not much sensibility (lets pretend any of this has changed...) it dawned on me that I haven't shared it on this Blog. 
So, voila reheated and ready for you, my first ever encounter with British criminals.

DAPHNE AND THE DEADLY CHAV. 

Most people who don’t know me, try to place my accent. American? Irish? Do I hear… Liverpool? No, no you don’t, get your ears cleaned and never talk to me again. My accent is a hybrid actually, I had an Australian teacher, a love for American TV, British music idols, many English friends and a Greek family and upbringing. Before we start with my story, let me clarify this, I now understand the British culture, I have adapted. I can’t stop myself from saying please and thank you like my life depends on it (and while it’s all the rage here, in Greece waiters think I have OCD), I put milk in my tea and I almost accept that the one and only thing y’all eat EVERYTIME there’s any sort of an occasion is a roast dinner.

Rewind six years, however, and none of this made sense to me. My accent was as Greek as it gets, my skin had a hint of the Mediterranean (as in tanned not hairy, thank you very much) and my knowledge of all things British could be entirely summarized in the sentence: ‘you like fish and chips and to get drrrrrrrrrunk, no?’. Adding insult to injury, I lived in the tiny posh slash chavtastic slash brilliant town (or maybe city because of some cathedral rule?) of Winchester in a house of four and a half residents, three and a half of which had not socialized with many foreign people before. One housemate actually, although good natured, never quite grasped that I was human. She referred to me as ‘The Greek’, described me to others as ‘a Greek’ and pretty much pictured me as a cat with a Greek flag print on my fur. When, in the summer, she came to Greece (to make sure it wasn’t an imaginary country, perhaps) she literally ate exclusively chips and bread for two whole weeks. She then died of constipation. No, sorry, she didn’t, that was a terrible joke.

The story I was asked to tell is about Chavs. As I mentioned, Winchester can be quite chavy, especially the parts of it students can afford to chill at. And what to you looks like a chav, to the untrained Greek eye is just a guy who must go to the gym a lot and is in dire need of a dental hygiene lecture and a shampoo bottle. So, when my half a housemate, Will, came into our house terrified one evening because ‘chavs’ had bullied him, I was baffled to say the least. Will looked at me like the ignorant token foreigner I was. ‘Do you not know about Chavs?’ ‘No’ I said, semi-ashamed. At this point, Hayley butted into our conversation ‘they’re the people with the traksuits and the big earrings’. Oh yeah, I had seen them. ‘They are horrible’ Will and Hayley chanted in unison (not really, but it would have been entertaining). They looked at me in the eyes and laid the horrific facts out. ‘They will shout things at you’. ‘Never look at them’.  ‘Especially not if they talk to you’. ‘And never EVER talk back to them’. ‘ESPECIALLY with your accent’. ‘They steal and spit’. ‘They killed a man outside Tescos the other day because he told them to be quiet’. It suddenly all made sense… they don’t go to the gym a lot, they wear tracksuits to run faster and the rotten teeth are from all the spitting and OH MY GOD their hair is dirty because they don’t have time to wash it in between murders!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fast forward two chav induced nightmare filled days, Hayley offers to give me a lift to the one stop. The little drive goes smoothly. We listen to two verses of a song and the beginning of a bad Fearne Cotton joke and we’re there. The glorious one stop. I get out of the car, unaware of what is to come. Take two steps. Then I see them. Trainers, tracksuits, bad teeth, bulldog, shit hair. My internal monologue goes into overdrive. ‘don’t look at them, don’t look at them, not with your accent, not with your accent, wait… they can’t SEE my accent, shhhh just don’t look, just do…’ ‘MISS?! MISS?!’ I hear a voice through two brown broken teeth. ‘shit, shit, shit, SHIT, I’m going to be the man at tescos’. Despite trying not to, I look up. They are actually talking to me. I can see the headlines ‘Chavs murder foreign girl after she rolled her ‘r’s at them’. They look as threatening as I expected. Short, angry. I turn around and look at Hayley with terror! Hayley is unphazed, she probably hasn’t noticed THE CHAVS, I think. I run towards the car keeping my composure. They talk to me again ‘Miss, Miss will you...’ That’s it, their voices trigger my street wise defense mechanism, unable to control it, a scream escapes my vocal chords ‘CRIMINALS!! THE CRIMINALS SPOKE TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE’. I get in the car shaking. Hayley looks at me like blankly.  I expect her to share my panic and drive away in full speed. Instead, she takes a moment to realize what has just happened and wets herself ‘you absolute moron!! They are eight year old kids in tracksuits, walking their dog’.

The above picture was taken approximately 15minutes after the terrifying incident. October 2006.

The Stylized Guide to Breaking Up.

I don't mean to be a cynic but I have little faith in relationships. Basically, they always seems to go a bit like this.

Breaking up sucks. Simply and to the point, here's a list of things I'd rather be subjected to:

- Eating my body weight in apples (I'm allergic to apples)

- Have a Richard Gere film Marathon (I hate Richard Gere) 

- Ouzo induced hangovers (The absolute worst)

- The full body itchiness you get after pulling all-nighters

- Being stark naked in public (but maybe not on fat days)

- Sinusitis 

- Maths... (I took it too far, give me a break up over maths any time!)

Now, I think that all break ups fall under the rather large umbrella of 'awkward, unpleasant, painful social situation'. I have personally experienced two spectrums of the above collection of undesired feelings. In the few break ups I have experienced in my life, I have been either awkward, unpleasant and painful but in a way, a relief

(what a visual representation of emotional relief looks like in my head)

or awkwardly, unpleasantly, painfully devastated. 

I'm going to come out and say it, I got dumped A LOT when I was in school. I'm not entirely sure what the reason was but I have a hunch it had something to do with the fact that I would get intimidated by beautiful boys and therefore not really talk to them for the entire duration of our 1-3 month long relationships. This kind of happened twice, one was a summer fling that commenced in the summer of 2003 during the ever so promising night of the August full moon (stuff right out of a shit chick flick can take a toll on the unprotected teenage heart), once the summer was over and before our tans had even had the chance to fade, the guy just stopped talking to me altogether (the lack of proper ending, I'm pretty sure, TECHNICALLY, still makes us a couple, so this is an apology to all of my boyfriends of the past 10 years for unknowingly two timing you, sorry guys!).

The next guy to dump me, genuinely had every right to. He intimidated me to the extent of muteness like no other. We used to go out and just sit opposite each other. He would sip on his abundant in milk coffee while I would order...nothing! He'd ask me to list my hobbies to which I'd just...giggle! But the absolute worst was our phone conversation. He'd ring me every night because that's what boyfriends did and we'd listen to each others silence for a cold sweat inducing 15 minutes before exchanging awkward I love you's and hanging up. Said relationship lasted a record breaking three months which at the time saw me ecstatically happy and blindly oblivious to the disaster to come. 'We have nothing in common' he said on the phone and even though I was pretty sure we both loved the Doors and Rolling Stones, in retrospect I think he meant the ability to use the power of speech to form a conversation. To say I was heartbroken is an understatement. I went cliche extreme, singing 'love of my life' more times than Freddie Mercury ever did, crying myself to sleep and rebounding with someone I did not care for one bit. Ahhh to be a teenager.

Last time I got dumped I had left my teens behind for a good two and a half years. A short lived relationship ended with an inbox facebook message that amongst other gems, included the phrase "I need to focus on my dissertation". In retrospect it's hilarious. At the time, I MAY have said that I was going to go to his house with placards listing the reasons our connection was not to be lost. My friends supportively took the piss out of me and all I did to keep us together was tell my friends that I would. Instead, I  ate a few too many soft king biscuits whilst replying to his message like I did not care one bit that he no longer saw a future together. (It was a hard task but one I feel I carried through with success).

How to cope with devastating break ups:

1) Find friends who have also been recently dumped.

At the time that this picture was taken, high on heartbreak delirium, my friend Natasha would greet everyone with the phrase 'Hello, we've just broken up....not with each other). And by everyone, I mean EVERYONE.

2) Don't eat your feelings.

Meeting your ex whilst being twice the size you were throughout your relationship is definitely more traumatic than the meeting itself.

3) DO NOT. I repeat DO NOT send a million and three texts with varying emotions. 

- Daphne Economou  10:30 

Hey! I hope you're well, I've missed talking to you :( xx

- Daphne Economou 11:01

WHY ARE YOU NOT REPLYING? This is so fucking typical of you, I'm so much better of without you. TWAT!

- Daphne Economou 11:30

I need my stuff back. I am moving on and I don't want to still have stuff lingering in your flat.

- Daphne Economou 12:00

Why is this happening to us? :(

- Daphne Economou 13:00

OMG remember our first date? how hilarious was that thing that you did? hahahahah xx

- Daphne Economou 14:00

YOU WERE ALWAYS AN ARSEHOLE I WASTED MY TIME WITH YOU.


4) Don't listen to 'your' song on repeat, don't watch rom coms, don't reminisce whilst looking at pictures and more importantly, don't go wearing their old boxers shorts that have been left in your flat. (I may have been there, I am not proud)

5) DO get drunk. NOT responsibly. BUT maybe hand your phone to your friends so that you dont drunk dial too much.

6) DO rebound. AND then show your rebound this blog post so that they know how to handle the fact that they meant nada to you! SORRY rebound.

.

Then, there are the 'better' break ups. You've loved each other but you've had one too many arguments and you've had enough.

When you've shared your life with someone you sort of mesh into one person, letting go of that unity is hard. But worry not, here's a few things you can do to make things better.

1) Spend time with friends that are hilarious.

2. Eat (more than) your feelings

3) Cherish the good memories.

4) And finally, forget the bad ones. (Like the time you dressed up as a cow on a bus and it was NOT appreciated.)

.

To end this post here's a list of cliche phrases you might hear a lot during this time. (possibly the worst aspect of the break up) 

- You're better off

- Keep your chin up

- She/he didn't deserve you

- It's going to get better
- This too, shall pass.

- Keep calm and carry on (punch the person who tells you this, you've got my permission)

- The best is yet to come....!