Here’s another Pippa post.  Pippa wrote an article for Spectator in which she reveals how she had a crush on her hockey coach, Mr. Markham (I’ll get back to this in a bit).  The article is all about how many sports Pips played as a kid, and she seems to have played a ton of sports in school.  She mentions cross-country being “compulsory”, not sure if all the sports were compulsory or if it was just that one, but it seems odd.  I’ve never been to a school where extracurricular sports were mandatory; PE, yes, but after school sports?  Seems odd to me, but I did not attend some fancy private school in Britain. 

There’s some interesting stuff in the article.  She mentions swimming and having to walk around in a swimsuit and shower and change in the locker room with a bunch of other people.  She writes: “the nightmare of the pool changing rooms: those awkward communal showers, the lingering scent of chlorine and adolescent body odour.”  Um, locker rooms, communal showers and body odor go with every sport, right?  It seems odd that Pippa would have a problem only with swimming.  It seems odd that she would have a problem at all since she seems to have been outgoing and confident as a teenager—usually the confident, outgoing girls don’t have a problem.  It’s even more odd since she dropped multiple lines about her body throughout the article, clearly she isn’t self-conscious. Maybe she just hated swimming and instead of coming out and saying she hated swimming she blames it on the locker room situation.

Back to cross-country, Pippa makes her and Kate look like the good, reliable girls when she says that many of her friends “suddenly got the flu” to get out of running the compulsory cross-country but that Pippa and Kate were always there to run the race.  The interesting thing is not the propaganda, it’s the fact that Pips says she and Kate did it reluctantly.  They did not want to be the girls who did every sport, but they had to—either because the sports were mandated by the school or because their parents pushed them into it.  So basically what Pips is saying is that when Kate’s sports track record is dragged out as proof that Kate is into more things than shopping, getting her hair done and vacations, it’s basically a lie since Kate did all those sports reluctantly.  Hm….  In your face Kate sycophants.

Another interesting bit is that Pippa kind of takes a dig at her mom.  Regarding long-distance running, Pips says: “On one occasion I recall being in second place, and as I passed my mother on the perimeter, I was feeling quite proud of myself until she called out, ‘Run faster, Pippa, run faster!’ What did she think I was trying to do?”  Pippa totally shades Carole’s pushing with that last sentence.  I wonder if that’s what Pippa thinks when Carole pushes Pippa to marry a wealthy, titled man and all Pips could bring home (or make stick since she did date the Duke of Northumberland’s son) is some non-titled banker whereas Kate bagged a prince who is second-in-line to the British throne.  You know Carole prefers William to any man Pippa could ever bring home.  I wonder if Carole holds that over Pippa’s head, like takes sly digs at Pippa.  Carole totally seems like the type of woman who would do that, even to her own daughter.  Ah, I’m starting to feel sorry for Pips again.

Back to Mr. Markham.  Apparently Pippa made him feel really embarrassed and might have hurt his standing at his new job by revealing she had a crush on him.  The press reached out to Markham, but he would not comment.  His father did, though, saying he thinks his son “will be abashed by the description. He is quite reserved.”  Ah, poor guy.  He was just living his life with his wife and now he’s being dragged into the media by Pippa Middleton and his life is being aired on the internet.  I feel badly for him.

In other Pippa news: Pippa was in South Kensington the other day.  She was working or something, seen coming out of “offices”.  Not sure what that means, but her outfit doesn’t scream “work” to me, it screams casual, like a shopping outfit or something.  But while it looks cheap, it isn’t.  The dress cost £345 (£140 on sale), the shoes cost £149, the big bag cost £80, the smaller bag cost £580, and the Givenchy sunglasses cost £159.  The total comes out to £1313, or £1108 if she got the dress of sale—and that’s English pounds, not American dollars (and doesn’t include sales tax).  In USD it would be much more than that.  That is one expensive what-looks-like-casual outfit.  Yikes.  I can tell she’s wearing a strapless bra (you can see the outline through the dress), which is not great; but whatever.  Overall, though, I don’t hate it.  It does not look like it should cost that much—the dress looks like a $40 dress from JCPenny’s—but as a casual outfit it looks fine.

PS. As a Pippa update from a post about a week ago, Pippa has denied she has gotten engaged. I’m not sure why the Middletons would leak an engagement story (because you know they were the ones behind that leak) just to deny it. Unless they leaked it hoping or anticipating a proposal from Nico and then she didn’t get one so they had to say that the story was false. Or just to get her some attention since Kate has been hogging it the entire summer.