Fading

Sweethearts, I have been through the mill. All my own doing. No, not mill. What’s it called? Mangle.

I loved mangling. Helped my grandmother to pull those sheets in one end out the other. No wonder I find ironing satisfying to this day.

In order to head off my next nervous breakdown (I nearly had ONE aged 19 when I threw a sponge soaked in red red wine against a white wall) I have been archiving and generally tidying up my life in the last few days. Once it’s finished I shall not know what to do with myself. In fact, I live in dread: What do you do once you have cross referenced everything? We’ll see. I suppose I could dance with the devil on the blue sea.

Anyway, the point of this post that I AM IN LOVE. Yes, with my handwriting. I love my handwriting. I do I do I do. I have reams of the stuff. Where the typewritten appeals to my sense of efficiency, my handwriting appeals to my self. My handwriting is ME. My identity. As, of course, is that of others. A few months ago I tidied all my private correspondence received. By sender. I didn’t need to look at ‘sender’. One look at a squiggle, a slant, and I knew exactly which pile it’d go on.

To end on a slightly melancholic note: What we cherish most we live in fear and dread to lose.

U

In mourning

Hate to admit it. But truth will come out like a zit on your teenage nose. At an inopportune moment. Waiting to be busted. Only to leave you with an even worse, and bleeding, crater. The type that no concealer will conceal.

Come to think of it concealers are the con men of the beauty industry. Don’t argue with me. I know. I am currently out of circulation since my skin has erupted in ways I didn’t know were possible outside a Lepers’ colony. It’s fascinating. You go through life unblemished. And at the worst possible time (like now) when still young and beautiful, yes really, I turn into my own version of a  nightmare.

Anyone with designs on visiting me: Forget it. I have put myself under house arrest till this is over. Will it be OVER? EVER? I have to hand it to the dermatologist, not the brightest spark in the circuit: Apparently it’s stress induced. Whatever that means. I don’t do ‘stress induced’ – the whole of mankind runs on adrenaline. Otherwise nothing would get done. And we’d long be dead in the cave. And if there is one thing to induce stress – by which I mean upset and DIS stressed – it’s when you can’t pacify your skin.

As I said before: See you in a mudbath. We’ll all be the same colour.

Damn. Damn. Damn and damn.

The above was NOT the point of this post. As usual I got carried away instead of telling you what I wanted to tell which I have now forgotten.

Share the pain. Isn’t that what Americans say? Don’t. Please don’t. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. God damn it. And I am not even vain. I am just used to being beautiful.

Ursula

Sweet

Whatever you do: Don’t get bitter. It’s not becoming and, unlike chocolate with more than 75 % cocoa solids, it’s not healthy. It’ll age you (nothing that happiness can’t revert to its former beauty) but, in the interim, you will hate people inquiring after your health. Mirrors to be clothed. Sons asked to not take after you by telling you the unvarnished truth.

See you at a Spa, say Baden Baden. In the mud bath.

U

Green light

By public demand getting back to pubic hair: The Professor, looking down beyond his navel early morning shower, went to London Zoo. He found, and a shocker if ever there was one, that our ancestors, apes and the like, do NOT have pubic hair.

This is how the scientist’s mind works (and no, no rats were shaved during the experiment): Not only are we set apart from animals by having a thumb which allows us to hold a pencil and write rubbish we are also helped by pubic hair as a ‘pheromone trap’. Apes, particularly some (like Pavians), don’t need to set a trap. They just show off their red bottom to all and sundry, like to me on my first visit to a zoo. What did I know about mating? All I could think of that they were colour blind or just blind.

So, in answer to the Gorilla with the Banana: Porn actors shave it all off because otherwise they might succumb to the REAL thing.

Phil has gone all philosophical on me. An aphrodisiac in itself.

Which brings me to designer stubble. If I want pumice stone I use pumice stone. This minute I am in no fit state to widen the debate to facial hair. All I know is that, once more, there is God up there, the forerunner to Orwell’s Big Brother and CCTV, watching our every move, with a long beard. Yeah, well, God, whilst I am so glad I do not have to shave my cheeks every morning, why the hell didn’t you give me, woman, the choice? Secondly, why do your womenfolk (come the 20th century) shave that off their body which, no doubt, you gave them for a reason whilst old men grow Captains’ beards?

Think about it, God. There are consequences to one’s actions. It’s all very well to do a pretty good bodge job seven days sharp (what was the hurry – you had all the time in the world) and then leave your creation in the grip of razors, wax, laser. Or Zappa.

U

That certain something

I have weaknesses. Two of them are boxes and frames.

A frame frames? Not necessarily so. A few years ago I bought a frame because it was elaborate. Think Louis Quatorze, big shirts, wigs infested with fleas. That sort of frame. It hangs on my wall. Empty. Nothing to detract from its hideous beauty.

U

Surplus

Having warmed to the theme I will recycle a comment I just left in response to a man who can’t be bought with a peanut for the price of a cocktail.

Two years ago a seagull shat on my head right bang centre of town. It felt like a huge raindrop on the crown of my head (you know, where your hair divides into front, sides, and back – the zenith as it were). However, it wasn’t raining. I tentatively felt the spot, inspected my finger tips and Watson to my Sherlock beat a determined retreat into the department store right next to me. Cosmetic departments always on the ground floor. And where they flog you beauty there will be tissues.

By golly, how lucky I was: I latched onto a counter with eyecandy complete with eyeliner in the shape of sex on legs. And no, I am not a cradle snatcher. I asked him for a tissue or five. To the credit of his upbringing and good manners he did not laugh when I told him what it was for. He only smiled. And asked me to come back for a make over once I’d recovered my composure and tidied up. I beat my retreat like a crab, only backwards.

Fast forward a couple of years: Now I live in true seagull city. None of them shit on me. Has my luck run out?

U

Grey to me, gray to you

It’s annoying when you think you are going against a trend – which is my want – only to find some fashion having caught up with you before you’ve had a chance to  be different.

No sooner have I bemoaned my lack of grey/gray hair (I want to be the next Susan Sontag and her white streak) no sooner does The Times inform me that young women do now frequent the same hairdressers in the finest of London as I used to before I headed for impecunity (it’s not funny: Falling from a height does have the ouch factor – will return to subject of poverty another time, and don’t give me genteel). Yes, grey/gray. So youngsters in their bloom will initiate grey. Fine. Do what you must. I have always gone with the flow and have not ever ever ever in my life let my hair be coloured. No henna or platinum for me. Genes gave me what genes see fit and who am I to argue? Highlights? Streaks? Go and find another victim. Still a good haircut is a must. And that’s where splits end.

I am with Geroge Clooney on going gray gracefully.

Yes, so one minute the young dye their hair grey, the next (yesterday) I learn that a new pill (naturally by L’Oreal) has been invented to keep gray at bay. So far so nothing. The amusing part being that the company will not be able to prove their “science” until about ten years in the future. A bit like making money whilst many a man hoping for the bold spot spouting.

On a side note: It’s one of the few products the industry can not test on animals because animals produce their own fur – HA – with the required ingredients to keep them in colour.

Sometimes I look at my parents and wonder. My hair is a mess. For years the most accomplished have told me that I am a rainbow of colours and thickness of my hair varies from the very thin to the thick. Thus a challenge to scissors.

Rounding up: Every time I detect a grey/gray hair I am being told it’s only blond gone blonder in the sun.

I’ll get there one day.

U

PS You may blame Val of www.absurdoldbird.wordpress.com for my taking up one of her strands the other day

Hairy

This is platform U and may I make an announcement:

Grannymar has missed the train.

As clues go it’s not cryptic. Don’t worry, Grannymar. Ramana hasn’t even found the station yet. Just stay where you are. In the meantime please do keep your ever growing playground in check, make sure they all stand in line and have a clean handkerchief at all times. Now, children, follow the leader. Because, if you don’t, you will never ever be spoken to again. Your existence will not be acknowledged. Because Grannymar is kind and just, sweet and full of herself and forgiveness. It’s what keeps her so slim. And her comments so short. And vacuous. Indeed, maybe unnoticed by Ramana who has his own problems, she is now beginning to repeat herself.

So remember: KISS (keep it simple stupids) when it comes to GM and you’ll be just fine. Having said that I do miss Grannymar’s needle classes  (I do; for god’s sake can I say anything people will actually believe?); apart from peeling tons of potatos for our respective siblings an interest in stitching the one thing we share. Pity. Still, how does the saying go: You can lead a horse in vain to find some water.

Hot tip of the day, GM, once told to me by my father when I was barely out of my nappies: There is nothing more off putting, less erotic, for a man, than to come across the dead cuttings of a woman’s crowning glory – whether on the floor, in the toilet,  in your comb or preserved for eternity on your blog. Why do you think a large contingent of the most eminent (male) hairdressers have no sexual interest in women?

Hugs and kisses,

U

The darkness blues

Newsflash from your very own Moaning Minnie:

Dawn has broken on 22 June (or at least for those of us who do NOT limp behind across the wrong side of the Atlantic).

21 June being the longest day of the year we are now marching towards the trenches of December. Yes, I know: I am a bundle of fun, aren’t I? My mother still hasn’t forgiven me for presenting her with a birthday card on occasion of her 40th stating that 50 is on the horizon. It was a perfectly valid observation. However, what the sender says is not always received in the spirit of one’s  own and often misguided humoUr.

Still, gaffes tend to make the best anecdotes some years down the line.

Going to smell the roses and the freshly erupted Jasmine,

U

Deja vue

This Thursday morning really takes the pits.

First: Remaining cat has decided to move out — probably on account of suddenly re-emerged flea population (must be the warm weather). Consequently I vaccuum like previously mentioned Dyson possessed, spend a fortune on flea spray, endanger my health by applying the damn stuff all over the house. Then, and since I don’t smoke, I visit a certain blog for a moment of light relief.

Thus disappointment lies (it was like smoking outside when it rains).

However, have now built conclusive and convincing argument that you will get an insight into a person by what they think is funny. Since I have recently gone off large-scale-bitching as it’s too much of an effort I shall only say: GM’s (and by implication Ramana’s) Today’s Special on the menu was lame. Not least because I have yet to find a grown man who cries over a rabbit. And as my son would say to both GM and Ramana: “You are BLONDIST.” Which reminds me: Why is it only ever the FEMALE blonde who is made out to be challenged in the brain department when there are so many male Arians (and Swedes) running around? Try and answer that one – but please be intelligent about it – even if you are of a mousey or any other shade.

U