Equally annoying are the trousers of just the right length to get caught on the top of ankle boots when you walk, creating an instant Star Trek look.
So could physics have saved me from all these indignities?
peDoghQo’∗
∗Klingon for ‘Don’t be silly.’ Sourced from the Klingon Language Institute: www.kli.org
Laundry love
It has often been said that food is love, but don’t you think that laundry is love too? This thought came to me this morning as I handwashed the tiny pink cashmere cardigan a generous friend gave my daughter Peggy when she was born.
Using a special cashmere ‘shampoo’, I washed that little cardie with the care of a curator cleaning an unbroken glass found in a newly discovered Roman villa. First I gently squeezed the detergent bubbles through the knit, as taught by my mother, never rubbing or scrubbing, but paying particular attention to the front, where dried milk and banana porridge lurked, and to the cuffs, which had seen some serious chewing action. Then, after several progressively cooler rinses (to settle the fibres) and a spin, I put it carefully out to dry, lying flat on a towel, near – but not too near – a radiator.
Later on I anticipate pressing it, using a just-warm iron and my special pressing mesh designed for protecting woollies. Then I will put it away in Peggy’s drawer with a lavender bag snuggled next to it.
Next time I dress her in it, the scent of the cashmere shampoo and the lavender will perfume our morning. And I will smell it again every time I kiss her soft little neck, which is quite often as the day goes on.
I will enjoy every step of that process, which is why, while I joyously share all the household tasks and childcare evenly with my husband (thank you Emmeline, Germaine, Gloria, et al, it was all worth it), I jealously guard my right to do the washing. This is quite selfish, really, as I love doing it, yet am still able to claim it as a share of my work points, against which he is obliged to take out the garbage, vacuum the stairs and wash the kitchen floor.
Rather as some men extravagantly take over the cooking, thus absolving themselves of all responsibility for other, less rewarding chores. Such as scrubbing the terracotta-hard fresh ricotta and spinach lasagne off the baking tray, or balancing the household budget after forays into bravura lobster dishes and $35 organic chickens.
While certainly a vast improvement from the ‘where’s my dinner?’ Neanderthal, that kind of display cooking can demand loud praise of the ‘you’re-so-lucky, isn’t Trevor wonderful?’ variety, while Trevor beams smugly, pops open another bottle of vintage shiraz and claims spiritual kinship with Neil Perry. (‘It’s all in your stock, mate.’)
Laundry is a quieter pleasure. The hobby laundress has more in common with the brownies; it’s love by stealth. Everyone in the house always has clean socks and undies, which appear, neatly paired and folded, just where they expect them to be. They never really think about how they got there, but at a subconscious level it makes them all feel happier in their lives. A deep-seated sense that all’s right with the world can be created just by someone happily keeping on top of the washing.
I’m so keen on it all that I even voluntarily use washable nappies for Peggy. Mind you, they are a lot more fun than they used to be. Forget those dreadful old terry towelling things – she has leopard-print nappies, shaped like little loincloths, that snap on and off with poppers. Sweaty plastic pants have been replaced by equally ergonomic and fashionable breathable microfibre wraps that close with Velcro.
What started out as an investigation of a more environmentally tolerable alternative to disposable nappies turned into a fabulous shopportunity. And the washing of them (a cinch – you just flush any unpleasantness down the loo, chuck them in a lidded bucket to soak and throw the whole lot into the washer at the end of the day), is another way of showing my love for her.
Which is clearly bred in the bone. When my mum comes to stay she still does my hand washing.
Revert to type
Well, I’ve looked right through John Betjeman’s∗ Collected Poems, but I still can’t find the one I’m looking for. It’s driving me nuts. I read it years ago and a line from it lodged in my brain and I really need to read it again.
It was one of his poems about a young woman from the Home Counties – a bit of a theme of his. (He clearly had a thing about women in ‘slacks’.) Anyway, this one went up to London – I think she went to art college – and had a bit of a bohemian time. Bearded men in chunky jumpers, coffee bars, fishnet stockings – that kind of 1950s caper. Sort of Miss Joan Hunter Dunn’s arty little sister. But the point of it was that in the end she goes back to Surrey and marries a suitable boy. ‘They always revert to type’ is the line that haunts me.
It’s such a casually damning little phrase and it came back to me like a punch to the jaw the other night. At the time, I was standing in my bathroom, with heated rollers in my hair, putting on my false eyelashes. Rigging myself up like a three-shows-nightly drag queen, for an event in a dodgy venue in a small provincial town.
Omigod, I thought, looking at my garish reflection, as I realised I used to do exactly the same thing twenty-five years ago, when I first started going out. To dodgy venues in another small provincial town.
OK, so this wasn’t quite such a parochial outing. My friend Steve was putting on his cabaret show (Robbie Williams is just one of his fans), with a bunch of musicians who tour with big-name artistes, but just coincidentally happen to live near me the rest of the time.
Whereas the kind of thing I used to get dressed up for at seventeen involved unknown and never-to-be-known bands – featuring my friends – at whatever desperate local venue they could persuade to have them. But to me and my gang, they were still big nights.
In between has been a period of relative sophistication. Dressing with a degree of restraint and elegance for grown-up events in proper big cities, or more extravagantly for major big nights (the Cointreau Ball, legendary New York club Area, Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World). But now, I realise that to all intents, I’m right back where I started from.
Like the man said: ‘They always revert to type…’ And I suppose my type must be small-town girl with big ideas. Certainly big hair. The realisation put a bit of a dampener on the proceedings, which up to that point I had been thoroughly enjoying, because – just as when I was sixteen – creating the ‘look’ was often the best part of the night for me.
Now I wondered whether it wasn’t a bit tragic for a woman of my age to be getting into the Carmen rollers and the false eyelashes. Another reference shot into my head: the woman in Midnight Cowboy who picks up Jon Voight. Closely followed by Terence Stamp in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
For a moment there, I was tempted to scrub it all off, pull my hair back into a ponytail and abandon the little black dress and sequinned shrug for jeans. Or even stay in. But I did neither, because in the end I decided it would be sadder to give in to middle age and the sofa than to go out wearing a big look in a small town.
So that’s the lesson here. If we do all, inevitably, revert to type, the thing is to acknowledge the type you are, and learn to love it. To quote another great line: I am what I am.
∗After publication I was besieged with emails from Good Weekend readers reminding me that the line in question was actually by the Australian poet Peter Porter and not by Betjeman at all. Oops.
Push out the olive boat
I have just been indulging in one of my favourite vices – flicking through a gorgeous poncy catalogue with no intention of buying anything.
This particular piece of shopping porn was from a high-end cookware emporium and I was happily contemplating the perfect liquidiser and those genius salad spinners where you just have to press the knob, when my eye was caught by the ‘Olive Boat’. This is possibly the most stupid thing I have ever encountered.
It’s a long, thin French porcelain, er, thingy, specially designed to hold about twenty olives – in a neat row, like Viking oar
smen. Yours for just $30!
In case you are concerned you might not get enough use from it for olives, it says in the helpful caption: ‘Also a great way to display and serve quails’ eggs, cherry tomatoes, or radishes.’
Now, the word ‘display’ does leap out of that sentence as particularly bollocks-y, but I would be hypocritical if I didn’t admit that I do care quite a bit about having things look nice around my house. And a certain awareness of the ‘display’ of mundane things is all part of that.
In the kitchen, for example, I like to store my lemons in a nice yellow bowl I bought in a French supermarket. It looks sunny and gay and they’re always handy when I want to make a salad dressing. Or a large drink.
When I have friends over for said libations, I enjoy serving olives in the fabulous 1950s art pottery soup bowls I bought in an antiques emporium in the Blue Mountains. They are all different colours with contrasting glazes on the inside and extremely pleasing to the eye. So is a plump pile of juicy olives tumbled into them.
But ‘displaying’ your olives or radishes in a serried line is another thing entirely. You’d have to place each one into the olive/radish/quail egg/cheese football boat with nimble little fingers. I feel itchy just thinking about it.
There wouldn’t be much to go round, either. If I came to your house for a cocktail and you presented me with twenty olives in a row like that, I’d be tempted to funnel the lot straight down my gullet in one movement, head back, like a force-fed goose.
And think what you’d have to do to a bunch of radishes to make them look neat enough for the French porcelain boat. You’d have to give each one a ritual circumcision, which is a damn shame as radishes in the raw have such wonderful bushy green leaves and whiskery curly ends. I have been known to wash a few bunches and use them as a centrepiece on a dinner table, with saucers of sea salt and butter strewn about. Decorations you can break off and eat are great fun.
Anyway, after meeting Miss Olive Boat, I was on high alert for other things to despise in the catalogue. It wasn’t hard when you can buy a packet of twenty paper ‘cheese leaves’ for $24 (I didn’t know cheese grew on trees, did you?), or an asparagus cooking pot for $100, or a feather duster for nearly the same amount. I was also struck by a wooden bread ‘crock’ for $250. Crock is the right word for it.
Outraged as I am by these prices, this is not to say I am against paying out big for the best cooking utensils. Au contraire, I’m all for it. It was a struggle to buy two Le Creuset casseroles when I was twenty-three, but I’m still using them today. More recently I’ve bought the best roasting pans I could find – wonderful heavy French things – and my baked chook has been elevated to a new sphere as a result. Gravy practically makes itself in them.
Likewise, I’m all for having the right vessel for the job. You need a soufflé dish to make a soufflé and ramekins and a blowtorch to make proper crème brÛlée. But nobody ever needed an olive boat.
Clothing compatibility
There are certain genres of clothing I will never be able to wear. This – for once – has nothing to do with being middle-youthed, with knees and upper arms well past their sell-by dates. I am talking about garments that have never suited me and never will. We are just not compatible.
It’s mainly to do with physical proportions. Take, for example, the swirling gypsy skirt. I have always longed to wear one of those. I yearned to swish around in one in 1974 – I was always trying them on in shops and even bought a couple, which I never wore – and in more recent times the desire has been rekindled by the gorgeous clothes of Brisbane-based label Easton Pearson, who seem to specialise in ravishing circular skirts.
Pam Easton and Lydia Pearson, the designers behind the label, wear their own clothes all the time and look totally fabuloso in them. Every time I see them, I long to be wearing a gypsy skirt myself, especially with a pair of divine flat boots, the way they do, but I know it cannot be. Put one of those heavenly skirts on and I would look like Humpty Dumpty in drag.
It’s partly because I’m hugely a short arse, of course, but it’s not just that. Lydia is not particularly tall either, but she looks wonderful in her skirts because she is so petite, particularly in the upper body. They are both really neat up there and that is the crucial thing, plus they both go in at the waist, which is the essential counterpoint to a big skirt.
I, on the other hand, have broad swimmers’ shoulders, an uncontrollable bosom and no waist. Oh yeah, I’ve got a small bottom and really small hips, but they don’t do much for me under a gypsy skirt. In fact, you need a bit of hip jut to create a frame for the skirt to sit on. Almost like a built-in crinoline.
But although proportions are a large part of it, they are not the only reason why a circular skirt will never be mine. Although I long to stride around Paris during the shows, as Pam and Lydia do, in those wonderfully romantic clothes, I know it just isn’t my look. I may feel romantic – and it’s hard not to, in Paris in February, with mist over the Seine and the Louvre rising up before you – but I know it’s not how I come over.
I’m a practical, pragmatic, tailoring girl. By staying true to myself, on a good day, I can pull off Fashionista Princess, and at the weekend I am right across Quality Blonde Smart Casual. Those are the looks for me; I was born that way. It’s almost like having a clothes star sign.
So this is how, with age and experience, I have given up raging against my fashion fate. I know the styling star I was born under and I have accepted it – more than that – I have embraced it.
Take, for example, another garment I shall never again attempt to wear: the palazzo pant. I think they are so elegant, so Coco Chanelish. I love the idea of gliding around in a pair with a big hat and huge black sunnies, but it’s not to be. Palazzo pants make me look like Danny de Vito.
It must be my lack of height again, but my girlfriend Jo, who is only about three inches taller than me, looks genius in palazzos. I can’t tell you the times I have walked beside her on a summer day, grinding my teeth and muttering, as she strode out in a pair of flowing white linen pants and some Manolo slides, swinging a Provençal basket. Grrrrrr.
But then, Jo says she can’t wear jeans. I feel like I was born in jeans and always have. So her clothing star sign is Palazzos and mine is Denim. I can live with that.
Ageing beautifully
I get enough shocks with regards to ageing when I look in the mirror these days, but I have recently experienced another kind of reflection of the passing years, which is the effect of passing time on the faces of old friends.
And old is the operative word here. It is so weird catching sight of someone you first met in the full bloom of youth and seeing a middle-aged person looking back at you. Especially when you know they are experiencing the same time warp when they look at you.
This really struck me the other week, when I bumped into a former acquaintance I hadn’t seen for several years. In the intervening time she had aged so dramatically, I hope I didn’t gasp when I saw her. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s a term I really dislike, but I couldn’t help feeling she had ‘let herself go’.
She’d gained loads of weight, was dressed scruffily – where she used to be ultra-chic – and her once-glossy hair was a mess of wild grey strands. Despite the lines that had formed on it, her exquisitely pretty face was the same, but I wondered whether I would have been able to see it through all the distracting accoutrements of age, if I hadn’t known it was there.
And that was what made this unexpected rendezvous particularly striking – this woman was unusually beautiful in her youth. She had an exotic loveliness that hypnotised men. Heads really would swivel, cartoon-style, as she walked down the street, and I have seen blokes rendered almost speechless by her at first meeting.
It wasn’t a raw sex appeal, charisma thing, so much as the sheer perfection of her features that used to strike them dumb. She was almost impossibly pretty and had what you might call a very pretty figure, too. She was never a model, but that beautiful visa
ge appeared in several arty books, as successive photographers and artists sought to capture it.
My own first husband – a painter himself – was one of them. He was fascinated by her face and while I don’t think he ever thought of hitting on her, he always treated her in a special way, with a kind of fond reverence. All of which made it hard for the insecure, youthful me ever to feel easy in her company. Not that I didn’t like her; I really did. She was good fun, interesting to talk to and never anything but lovely to me, but I always felt awkward – not to mention ugly – around her.
And I have to admit that when confronted by the aged version, all that unease was gone. For the first time I felt I was interacting with her as an equal and was able to enjoy her warm, up-beat personality without her beauty getting in the way.
But the really interesting thing that struck me was that I had never seen her happier. When I’d first known her, she was living the London high life, out on the town, famous boyfriends, designer gear, exotic holidays, a permanent suntan, the works.
But while she appeared to have the lifestyle to which we were all supposed to aspire, she never quite seemed comfortable in it. I always felt there was a stone in her shoe.
Now she’s living in the country, with her not-famous husband and growing family, not glamorous at all, and that stone is definitely gone. She seemed as at ease with herself as I finally was in her company.
And even beyond the satisfaction of raising some great kids – she had them with her – I felt she was relieved to have put the beauty behind her. I suppose that beauty on that level must carry the responsibility that goes with all inherited privilege, and it was as though she had set it aside like a heavy weight.
Gravity Sucks Page 12
