‘My goodness, I wouldn’t have recognized you!’ said a friend of my mother’s who remembers me from the days when I was a sallow brunette nail-biter and tall for my age.
I stopped biting my nails on my wedding day (which must prove something about marriage). I’m still tall, but the only remaining constant factors are brown eyes and a tendency to wave my arms about and talk a lot. I can’t seem to help this, although if I sit on my hands it does quieten me down. Opinions vary on whether this is a good thing. Some folk squeeze my arm at parties and say: ‘Never lose your vivacity my dear.’ Others don’t invite me to their parties. Which is quite understandable.
When we are very young we want everybody to like us. We want to do all the right things. We drink in advice from all quarters and stumble through our formative years believing folk who say: ‘You should always wear pink/black/flannelette/rhinestones/water-wings/tinfoil/old snow shoes.’
Gradually, however, we learn that you can’t please them all. So it seems best in the long run to please yourself. And/or your husband if you happen to like him.
Husbands with definite views can have a noticeable effect on new brides. It only takes a few well-chosen remarks during the honeymoon, like: ‘Those sandals make you look like my old music teacher’, to indicate that one’s image isn’t all it might be.
Some men marry curvy, colourful, sexy girls. They then become enraged and say: ‘Stop flaunting yourself like that!’ and the poor dear is forced to lead a cloistered life, shuffling around in shapeless woolly hats and coats. With us, it was different. In fact, my husband quite likes men to stare and go ‘Cor!’ (At me, of course, not at him!) And as they don’t stare much at big, sallow nail-biters I had to make a few changes right from the start. Oh, all right then. Lots and lots of changes. And I’m still working at it. Over the years I’ve been country tweed, Marks & Spencer, leather and beads and tie and dye. I have also changed from naturally sallow to Sport Light and from lifetime brunette to Definitely Blonde. And let me tell you, gentlemen really do seem to prefer them. (Us.)
I decided to go blonde years ago but I couldn’t get my hairdresser to take me seriously. You can’t really blame him. Sitting there in wet hair and nylon cover-all I did look a fairly far cry from a potential sex symbol. Not that he actually said I couldn’t go blonde. He just kept laughing silently and patting my cheek.
When I finally convinced him that I really meant it I walked out of his salon all golden and gleaming, and a passing chap, with an excited cry of ‘Hey there, doll’, drove his van right into somebody’s rosebed. That was definitely one of my good days.
Spurred on by this and one or two fascinating propositions no one ever put to me when I was a brunette (one can always say ‘no’ but it’s super to be asked!) I’ve made other changes. I’m not quite as big as I was, although there’s one thing that troubles me about dieting. Apart from actually getting started. And that is the way my slim top half gets thinner and thinner while all that hip-to-knee chub stays exactly the same.
Avidly I read slimming articles which all assure me that eventually the bulgy bits will disappear. So I spend weeks eating nothing but grapefruit or fish fingers or pickled gherkins – and what happens? The bulges stay put while my top whittles down to a twiglet. My old pear shape was bearable. But inverted toffee-apple-on-a-stick takes some getting used to.
To overcome this I’ve taken to long skirts and flappy trousers. (I’m fairly pleased with the way things are shaping up until Anna dents the My Fair Lady image by confiding, in a well-meaning voice, that she quite enjoys having an eccentric mother …)
Others, less well-meaning, tell each other that I’m going through a funny phase and that it must be my age. But as people have been telling me it’s my age, non-stop ever since I was eleven, I ignore this.
Then comes a real breakthrough. I manage to persuade Roy, the cheek patter, to give me a curly-wurly hairstyle, and I’m really embarking on a whole new way of life on the strength of it. After years of carefully straightening out the kinks I can at last toss and turn and dash about in the rain and still look like a cross between Shirley Temple and a slightly Afro Bedlington terrier.
True I’ve given one or two passers-by a fit of the giggles. True my mother did laugh nervously when she saw me and said: ‘Well, you’re certainly looking well, David’’. True I did stand right up close to two ladies in the powder room at Bourne & Hollingsworth while they stared at me in quite a rapt way.
And they did then say loudly: ‘My word, don’t you see some ghastly hairstyles about these days?’ – presumably on the assumption that I was either very foreign or very deaf. But this is a small price to pay for feeling happy. (You have to feel happy with this hair-do. It just wouldn’t go with a sad face.
So if you happen to be sitting at home at the moment, biting your nails and feeling a bit lank and yellowish – why not pluck up your courage and do something wild? Go on. I bet you’ll feel all the better for it.