Am I Out of Touch?

 Lashes so big they've got their own weather system. A skirt so short it's legally more of a belt. And nails so long they need a translator to place a phone call. This week Alison stares down three beauty trends that have quietly gone completely feral — the forty-minute "no-makeup" makeup tutorial, the great skirt-belt identity crisis on the high street, and the American talon economy — and asks the only question that matters: is it me, or has everyone else lost the plot? Three rants, three verdicts, and one sincere plea for someone to teach these women how to peel a satsuma. 

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Nobody's actually listening to anybody anymore, and this week I've got the evidence. First up: text speak, and the modern message that requires a decoder ring, a phone call, and a small prayer to understand. Then: selective hearing, or as I'm increasingly convinced a very specific, undiagnosed medical condition that only ever affects requests to take the bins out. And finally: the yawn, delivered directly into your face, mid-sentence, like your Tuesday update about the printer was personally exhausting to witness.

Three crimes against basic human communication. One verdict. Am I out of touch, or is it genuinely getting harder to be heard?

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Someone at a dinner table pointed their knife straight up in the air like they were about to knight a Yorkshire pudding — and that was the final straw. This week: the great cutlery confusion (outside in, people, it's not complicated), the correct way to park your knife and fork between mouthfuls (there are two positions, it's basically Morse code), and the napkin that got used to clean someone's phone screen at an actual wedding.

Plus: a fond, slightly tragic look back at the days when John Lewis had silver service — an actual man in a waistcoat, spooning your carrots for you, next to the escalators — versus now, where the height of dining formality is unloading your own plate off a robot. And finally, the show draws a hard line on afternoon tea versus high tea, because they are not the same thing, whatever the hotel website tells you.

Full episodes every week. If this one landed, rate it, review it, and send it to whoever in your life still points a knife at the ceiling mid-sentence. Got a rant of your own? Leave us a voice message at speakpipe.com/amioutoftouch.

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It's the one where I go abroad — or at least, where I roast the very British way we all go abroad. This week I'm covering three national holiday traditions we refuse to admit are unhinged: the 6:47am sunlounger stakeout (towel down, book on top, straight back to bed), the astonishing British ability to fly four hours to Spain and still order egg and chips at a pub called The Red Lion, and the deeply held belief that any language barrier can be solved not with a phrasebook, but with volume.

Sunburn, baked beans imported specifically to keep resort pubs stocked, and "DO. YOU. HAVE. A. TABLE. FOR. FOUR." — delivered slower and louder like the problem was never the language. Three verdicts, one very British holiday, and me promising I won't become "Terry-with-a-towel" next week. (I will.)

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Am I out of touch? You tell me.

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 Two bonus rants a week, subscribers only. Because apparently once a week isn't enough for me to be annoyed about things. https://www.buzzsprout.com/2625633/support
 

Somewhere along the way, trainers became an "appreciating asset," heels became optional, and a boating shoe designed to be hosed down after gutting a fish became a six-billion-pound company with a queue outside it. This week I go sole searching (sorry) through three decades of British footwear, from the door policy at a nightclub called Envy to a very unscientific twenty-minute stakeout outside a coffee shop, to work out what we actually lost when we swapped heels for comfort — and what on earth Crocs are trying to prove.

Trainers as investment vehicles. The death of the going-out top. And the truth about individuality when fourteen women in a row are all wearing the exact same "unique" shoe.

Rate, review, subscribe — and tell a friend who's currently defrosting a pair of trainers out of tissue paper.

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Men. Their heads. Their faces. What is happening. This week's episode is a deep dive into modern male grooming chaos: the baseball cap that never comes off — not at dinner, not at a wedding, not even for the vows — the mysterious disappearance of the plain old clean shave in favor of a "strategic stubble" that somehow takes more effort than shaving, and the wild transformation of beard maintenance from "dad with the kitchen scissors" into a nine-step regime involving beard shampoo, beard balm, and — brace yourself — a heated beard straightener. There's a word called "beardruff" now. We didn't ask for it, but here we are.

By the end, there's even a grudging moment of sympathy buried under all the jojoba oil. Verdicts are delivered. Terry is called out by name. Multiple times.

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 You paid £400 for a ticket, and somehow you're still doing the airline's job for them. This week on Gate Expectations: printing your own boarding pass, wrestling a suitcase into submission at the Cage of Shame, and the eternal mystery of whether your laptop needs to come out of the bag. It's Gate Expectations, and today, we fly." 

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 Your cat isn't a pet, he's a landlord with fur. This episode,  breaks down the true cost of loving a cat: the eleven-day wait for a vet appointment, the mysterious "clinical waste disposal charge," pet insurance that blames everything on a raised eyebrow from 2019, and the cattery webcam that reveals your cat is having the best week of his life without you. Spoiler: you're not the owner. You're the staff. 

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 This episode takes on the holy trinity of British summer: vegan food that insists on impersonating meat, the sacred chaos of the back garden BBQ, and restaurants that charge £5.50 for a bowl of chips. Expect socks-in-sandals discourse, smoke-scented laundry, a beetroot burger nobody can tell from the real thing, and a full audit of why bread is suddenly an appetiser. 

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Don't get comfortable — because it is that time of year. The strawberries are overpriced. The queue started forming yesterday. Someone is already debating whether it counts as rain.

It's Wimbledon.

Now, I love Wimbledon. I want that on the record before I spend the next fifteen minutes systematically questioning every decision being made there. I have been. It is magical. It is one of the great British experiences, right up there with a proper Sunday roast and the specific satisfaction of a delayed train finally arriving.

But there are things happening at SW19 that I cannot let go without comment. Prize money. Press conference boycotts. The quiet assassination of the chalk line. Players complaining about wearing white. At Wimbledon.

And don't even get me started on the ladies' toilets.

So settle in.

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