I was out in the city centre this afternoon doing last minute, pre-wedding shopping with mum and dad: for me, a flower for my hair; for dad, a tie (it’s a very good job I was there when he was looking for a decent tie, because the ones he was looking at, well….just not the right colours…and yes that’s ‘colours’ in the plural because it was spotty….). I also wanted to buy a simple silver ring, because I always wear rings but none of mine are exactly bridesmaid material, so I wanted to buy one or two so that my fingers wouldn’t feel lonely and empty all day…. Don’t worry, I’m aware that this is weird.
Anyway, I was hanging around in the jewellery section of Debenhams (I actually had to look up how to spell that….how odd), waiting to meet up with my parents again and increasingly coming to the conclusion that Debenhams is waaaaay out of my financial league (the cheapest rings there were around £50; I ended up buying mine from Hennie’s, where you could buy 10 for about £3…). As I stood there, obviously looking dazed and confused by the finery around me, I was pounced on by one of those make-up-sales-people that hang out in places like Debenhams.
To say that I’m not a person who wears make-up regularly would be a bit of an understatement. I don’t own any, and I probably have only marginally more skill at applying it than my spotty-tie-for-his-son’s-wedding father does. Well, ok, I’ve probably got a lot more skill at make-up application than dad does, but that’s more a reflection on dad than any suggestion that I know how to use that stuff that many girls (and I guess some guys?) spend quality time poking themselves in the face with for fun and frolics. This is all just explanation for why I literally burst out laughing when the make-up sales woman approached me, a hopeful glimmer in her eye.
My excuse for what happened next is that it’d been a pretty surreal day already, what with my ridiculous early morning for no reason, the repeated realisation that the wedding is the day after tomorrow, and then of course having my hair cut at the quite-posh-hairdresser’s where the bridal party is going on the morning of the actual wedding. This combination left me feeling very-slightly-rather insane, and kind of how I imagine being high feels like. So, when the make-up sales woman approached me, I decided to just go with it. I gave her fair warning that I was pretty much a hopeless case and she wouldn’t be particularly successful in her attempts to make a customer out of me (as if my explosive laughter and disbelief weren’t warning enough), but it turned out that she was bored and just wanted something to do, so she didn’t really mind.
She led me away, still vaguely protesting and with the occasional maniacal giggle (is that a thing? I know you can have maniacal laughs, but can you giggle maniacally? Let’s go with yes, yes you can), toward her little stall thingy, and got me to sit on one of those funky stool things. She talked me through what she was going to do (you know, so that I could replicate the effect myself at a later date…should I so wish….I don’t need to say anything, do I?), you know: moisturising and skin-invigorating and all that jazz. She then proceeded to enthusiastically stroke my face with her make-up brush which was filled with an orange-ish cream which, I won’t lie, did distress me a little – I may not care enough about my face to put make up on it, but I’d rather not look orange (don’t worry though, it turned out alright – she knew what she was doing…phew!...).
Then came the bit which made her give up on me altogether. She asked me how that made my skin feel. Fresh? Invigorated? Vaguely damp? Oh, no wait, that last one was what I answered with. Her face kind of fell, and before she could master her features again I saw a kind of bewildered pity cross them. Apparently no one had ever described their skin, post-swabbing by this amazing moisturise-y invigorate-y stuff, as ‘vaguely damp’ before. She tried to laugh it off, but I think deep down her heart was breaking for me.
I was reminded of so many instances in my smallish-person days, when I wanted to be like my brothers so I had ‘boy’s haircuts’ and wore ‘boy’s clothes’ and did ‘boy things’. I had in fact been looking at photos of those days with my middle brother, Michael (not the one getting married, that’s Stephen) only the night before as we searched for pictures of the groom in his smallish-person years. How many times in my life have I earned those looks of slightly awed pity from my female friends as they try to comprehend my lack of desire for covering my face in strange chemicals or fighting the battle to control my hair. It appears that I still have the power to earn them; some things will never change. One of these things which will never change is that I frequently agree with Jane Austen, but rarely with Mrs. Bennet: it is often much more fun to buck a trend than to bow to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment