Pop off!

I know you've noticed but bear with me as I record my own irritation. Nothing is red or yellow or orange anymore. Instead it's a "pop of colour". Or it just plain "pops".
Don't believe me? Go here and here and here. These all popped up (sorry) on the first page of a Google search. And Gala Darling makes sure to repeat her crime in the very next line, in case we didn't pick it up in the header.

A pop of colour!

I always think it’s lovely to wear a pop of colour in cold weather.

 

Hey, fashion journos and bloggers - noun or verb - this is now officially a cliche! And, amongst other duties, it's your job to avoid cliches. Or don't you expect to be read? Do you and your editors assume we're all just looking at the pictures? In which case, get a real job!

This might sting a bit

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It's been a long time since I last had a wiggly tooth. My final baby incisor fell out when I was 16. I was long past believing in the Tooth Fairy, or anything much except the unfairness of life, so no sixpence under the pillow for me. Just an embrrassing gap for the next 20 years. And a permanent memento of my delayed development in the form of my first passport photo.
Eventually it occured to me that I didn't have to keep cowering behind my hand when I laughed, that as an adult I could spend the money I earned on something that would make me feel better. So I had  a bridge made, and from that moment grinned freely and often. Sometimes when a grin wasn't even justified.
Imagine my dismay, then, to discover some decades on that I had another loose tooth.
I poked it. I wriggled it. I tried to believe I was imagining it. I went into denial for a week or two. I began poking and wriggling again, sometimes in the dead of night, as if I might be able to creep up on it before it had time to pretend to be loose. I had dreams of losing all my teeth and being unable to make myself understood or eat anything but baby food.
Finally I went online in the expectation of being told not to worry, that everyone from time to time got wiggly teeth, and that it would soon see sense and tighten up again.
In fact, online told me I probably had gum disease. Worse, it said that this was most likely caused by poor dental hygiene.
I reeled back in horror and fled to the bathroom. I flossed so long and so fiercely that for an hour afterwards all my teeth hummed and moaned. Then I made an  appointment to see the dentist.
She didn't call my tooth loose or wriggly - she called it "mobile". I thought that rather overstated the situation, as if the damn thing were practically nomadic. Nor did she tell me not to worry. She said I had done the right thing in coming to see her and that something would have to be done.
You know when they say that you're not going to get off lightly. There will be pain, quite a lot of it, and mostlyu in the wallet.
I won't bore you with the details. The upshot is that the tooth is loose not because of my sloppy personal habits but because for 30 years it's been having to do a disproportionate amount of the chewing work. 
I must learn to chew on the other side of my mouth, and that's where she will construct a second bridge to take the strain.
If it it all goes to plan, my smile will be unaffected. After I've recovered from paying for it, that is.

Tweeting (the old-fashioned way)

It's pushing it for a style blog to get "twitchy", but I have to tell someone - two regular visitors to the fuschia outside my bathroom window are a pair of hihi or stitchbirds. They caught my eye the other morning as I peered out looking for the source of the constant twittering. (Years ago, in another house, I ignored a similar sound, then discovered it was caused by a local cat ruthlessly decimating a nest of baby thrushes over the course of an afternoon.)
The pair I saw was banded like this one, so I knew it was special. Hihi are one of the country's rarest endangered birds.

They were back again just now, this time sucking upsidedown on either side of a cluster of native fushcia blooms, talking incessantly to one another.
I was outside, only about a metre away, but they ignored me (a feature that helped identify them, as they're know to be too tame for their own good). Torn between continuing to watch and wanting to fetch my camera, I stayed rooted to the spot until they moved on, still chattering.
The picture shows a male. The female, you won't be surprised to hear, is somewhat less showy - a drab olive.
So this was about style after all.

The Princess of Balaclava

Seen on Carlisle Street with her attendant Dad, she was modest but dignified, as befits a real princess.