Calendar Girls..

Come on guys, any of you seen the film? Of course you have, and if you haven’t, well, you’re missing out! Who wouldn’t want to watch a feature length full of naked women posing strategically behind iced buns and watering cans? Exactly. Oh, but there’s one thing you should know before you start rushing down to Blockbusters’ adult section – the tactically positioned women are OAP members of the WI. I suppose you’ve put you coats back on the hook by now, haven’t you?

Okay, okay, let’s have some background.

Simply enough, the central character of the film (played by Julie Walters, no less!) suffers the bereavement of her husband due to Cancer and to raise money for a charity for him she and her ‘still-got-it’ friends decide to pose for a naked calendar.

Interested again? Probably not, but even so I’m not writing a film review here so I’m not too bothered if you go out and rent it this weekend or not.

What I’m bothered about is promoting something not dissimilar to what Ms Mirren did that – perhaps more appealingly – my lacrosse team and I took part in yesterday.

So, we’re not old aged pensions and definitely not members of the local Women’s Institute but we do have something in common with the Calendar Girls; we’re going to be calendar girls ourselves! In aid of raising money for our university sports teams we posed for one month of our own University of Kent calendar, and it was a brilliant experience to say the least.  

Walking into the university changing rooms where it was being shot everyone was a bundle of nervous giggling as – unlike the men’s rugby team who get naked together after practically every match – none of us had ever been in a situation like this before. Thankfully the ice was broken quite quickly by a simple ‘Well, let’s get them in their underwear’ comment from the photographer in a no-fuss-just-get-your-kit-off kind of way, and everyone relaxed into it and just had a laugh.

We had a few different shots taken but the one we opted for in the end was...

...ah, sorry – I’m going to have to stop right there!

You’re going to have to buy the calendar if you want to find out how a group of nine women’s lacrosse players posed together yesterday. If you don’t the buy calendar, what happens in the changing room stays in the changing room!

Calendars are going on sale before Christmas, perfect stocking fillers – but perhaps don’t buy one for your Nan! – and all the money goes to raising funds for the sports teams of University of Kent. After all, if we didn’t have the teams we wouldn’t have such fit players to put on a calendar in the first place!

So spare the money this Christmas, it’s all for a good cause, I know I’ll be buying mine..

Too much love..?

It all begins when you hear those three little words from the one person that you've been hoping would say them for months. It's a scene from the movies with your face flatteringly out of focus and a crescendo of instruments ushering you into a running leap of an embrace; no matter if your face is out of focus because the street lights are at the end of a filament or if you catch your heel in a gap between the pavement for running without sensible shoes and land at his feet rather than in his arms because he said he loves you and nothing can spoil that moment. My man? He said those three words to me one night after we'd spent an evening at his house, but he said them so quickly that by the time I had registered it he'd already shut the front door behind him! Never has a front door ever looked more appealing to me than then! Fair enough it stopped me from making that run up at a kiss  (perhaps that was a good thing!) but yes, I still walked away to violins and butterflies and all the other lovely clichés you'd expect.

The truth is when someone says they love you you let your guard down - not so much that it's noticeable to them or even to yourself but just enough - even a little could be too much. 

Go on, how many times have you said you love a guy who turns out to be a complete prick or who you haven't spoken to in months, years now? How many times have you let yourself love someone so much that even the little disappointments like him forgetting that you take two sugars instead of one in your tea seem like the end of the world? That's you letting your guard down. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing. On the contrary, if we constantly had our 'guard' buttoned up to the collar then we would never actually hear or say those three words at all. All I'm saying is can we actually love someone too much? Is it possible to over-love?

 

The answer to that is yes. But I'm not talking about too much love in the I-stalk-your-workplace-and-know-your-favourite-Thai-restaurant kind of way, I mean the kind of love that we experience in our everyday relationships rather than the 'love' that we have for the celebrities we follow on Twitter (but that's a whole other matter!).

Personally I am a self-confessed over-lover. I need an extra pair of hands to count the number of times I've said to myself "I love him too much" but have never managed to come to a conclusion about what I actually mean. Is it a bad thing? - that you can love someone so much that you would drop everything for him when he rings and overlook all those little annoyances that you shout down in everyone else? Or is it good that despite everything he is that person you will always love, no matter whether he lets his hair grow to ridiculous lengths before getting it cut or that he never buys you flowers any more?

The conclusion? There is a fine line between love and obsession; soul mates and stalkers. Find the first and avoid pushing a toe over to the second. Too much love (and no matter how much) in a relationship is what keeps it going - just make sure to keep those binoculars and phone bugs in the attic - it's when you don't have enough love that you should start to worry!