Take courage from this, and tell him before you meet what you really look like. Don’t admit that you lied, but simply say that you should describe yourself in more detail, and then paint a slightly truer portrait. At the same time, you might push him a little about what he really looks like.
You have been a very stupid woman, but it may not be too late. Good luck.
Dear Graham,
Among my circle of rather groomed 40-something girlfriends, I’m the only woman who hasn’t had Botox. As a result all my pals have brows as smooth as Bernini sculptures, while I look my age (43). Perhaps it’s an age thing, or perhaps I really am worn out, but people keep telling me how tired I look. None of my old tricks (Chanel lipstick, regular eyebrow shapes, blingy earrings) seem to work any more.
I’m not keen to go down the Botox route – quite apart from anything else, it costs a bomb – but it’s hard being the only woman I know who can actually move her facial muscles. Should I learn to love my wrinkles? Or should I get real: if I don’t blitz those frown lines pronto am I likely to end up jobless, manless and possibly even homeless?
Sally X, Worthing
Dear Sally,
Time is not our friend. There are no loyalty points in life. Let’s not fool ourselves – age brings nothing but humiliation. But your friends who are walking around looking like surprised burn victims don’t look any better than you, merely differently old. They have spent hundreds of pounds to humiliate themselves.
My advice is not to pick a fight you know you can’t win. Having said all that, it does sound like you look really awful. Are you truly tired? If the answer is ‘yes’, then get some rest. If the answer is ‘no’, then wear sunglasses as much as possible and ask your friends if they’ve had a mild stroke.
I doubt you will ever learn to love your wrinkles but remember that the only nice thing about getting older is that it happens to everyone. I often take comfort when watching bright young things dancing around clubs with their shirts off, in thinking about them bald and smelling of their own wee. If you’re really lucky, you might bump into a gerontophile. Look it up in the dictionary. Trust me, it will cheer you up!
Dear Graham,
Do other English males share my horror of dancing? Whenever I hit the dance floor at parties, I become horribly embarrassed and self-conscious. Most of my male friends can’t dance either, and they require enormous amounts of alcohol to try, but for some reason it’s me who attracts the most comment. I’ve tried parodying myself by dancing in a semi-ironic way, but that doesn’t seem to work either.
Needless to say, I’m already dreading our annual Christmas party. Do you have any tips?
Adrian B, Rye
“Flinging myself across the room in my oversized silk shirt, I looked like Douglas Bader being attacked by a swarm of bees.”
Dear Adrian,
Dancing is a mystery to many and certainly to me. I used to be a very keen dancer until I witnessed myself throwing some shapes in a friend’s wedding video. Flinging myself across the room in my oversized silk shirt, I looked like Douglas Bader being attacked by a swarm of bees.
Now I tend to avoid all fancy footwork, but sometimes vodka can still make me think that I’m the love child of Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. If I were you, I would hug the bar as much as possible. Irony is difficult at the best of times and I’m fairly sure it’s a non-starter when it comes to the dance floor.
Over the years I’ve learned two tricks. A simple side-to-side shuffle may be rubbish but no one is going to talk about it in the taxi on the way home. Attempting to mimic those around you is another option. Again, it may be awful, but if it’s what everyone else is doing it’s harder for the group to pick on you.
When it comes to going out with a group of friends, it is important to choose your moments to shine. We can’t all be brilliant all the time. Accept that the dance floor is not your arena and look on the bright side: you’ll always find the drunkest girls at the bar. Let the rhythm take you!
Dear Graham,
Am I a sex tourist? I’ve fallen in love with a Turkish farmhand I met when I was on holiday in East Anatolia last year. He lives in a remote hilltop village and has never stepped outside Turkey (and has no intention of doing so).
I’m in my mid-fifties, widowed with grown-up children; he’s in his early forties. He doesn’t appear to be interested in my money, or to have any desire to come to England, but even so I’m worried that I’m just like those desperate middle-aged women who pick up younger men in Ghana. My daughter – who has never met the man – says that it’s ‘disgusting’ and it’s time I started acting my age.
Although language is a bit of a problem, we understand each other perfectly. He also treats me like a queen and makes me feel young again. Men of my age in Britain are either long married, dysfunctional or busy chasing girls in their thirties, so over here my romantic prospects are terrible.
I suppose this relationship has no future and perhaps I am making a fool of myself, but is what I’m doing so very reprehensible?
Margaret H, Tunbridge Wells
Dear Margaret,
I like sex. I’ve stayed up too late at night to get it. Fortunes have been spent travelling across London to find it. But I’ve never wanted it badly enough to trek all the way to a remote Turkish village and lie down with a man whose cologne is stale milk and manure. But you obviously enjoy the experience and, as you so rightly point out, men in Britain aren’t exactly pushing the pierced-navel lovelies out of the way to get to the 50-year-olds.
It’s all very well for your daughter to call you disgusting, but she has yet to experience the cruel journey from farm-fresh to stock clearance at the back of the shop. I think you know the answers to most of your questions. Yes, you are making a bit of a fool of yourself, but then sitting around being dignified at the book club hasn’t got you chatted up recently.
Clearly, it will end in a flurry of heartache, but this is where you must make a decision. If you choose to continue, just go for it and enjoy the relationship for what it is – until one day he throws a glass of warm goat’s milk in your face and uses words that sound like he’s gargling jelly.
If you feel you can’t ignore your worries or the opinions of others, then you might as well end it now. I hope you don’t, because it must be better going to the grave regretting things you did rather than those you didn’t.
But if someone is reading this in an airport waiting for a flight to Ghana with their life savings in a bag, this advice doesn’t apply to you. Go home. Shirley Valentine has a lot to answer for.
Dear Graham,
My Greek girlfriend makes such a racket when we make love that I can’t look my neighbours in the eye when I pass them in the hall. The last time things got a bit high-pitched, I begged her to pipe down, but she only laughed and accused me of being ‘pathetically middle-class and worrying about what the neighbours think’.
The problem is that I am middle-class and do worry about the neighbours. Of course, I’m a lucky man to inspire such fervour in the bedroom, but is there any way of ensuring that the next time we’re in the mood things are a little more sotto voce?
Justin T, Manchester
Dear Justin,
This is a situation where I feel sorry for everyone involved: your neighbours for having to listen to your girlfriend scream like Nana Mouskouri having hot moussaka dumped in her lap; your girlfriend for having a boyfriend who tells her off about how she makes love; and you for having a poor-quality flat conversion.
Why not seduce your Olympic screamer during times when other loud things are going on, such as the X-Factor results show? Unless you move to a well-insulated or remote home, this situation will never resolve itself. You can’t stay in a relationship if you find having sex with your partner annoying.
As she is Greek, why not get her to smash plates when things hot up. Then your neighbours will simply think you indulge in occasional bouts of domestic violence – far less embarrassing.
> Dear Graham,
My London-based granddaughter, who’s a fussy eater of 13, has just announced that she’s vegan. It goes against the grain of everything our family stands for. We’re (dare I say it) classic hunting, fishing, shooting types.
I met my husband on a grouse moor in Perthshire 45 years ago and have been plucking game birds ever since. I’ve spoken to friends and it seems that veganism is all the rage these days among the young. I can’t understand it at all. In my day, you ate what was put on your plate and that was the end of it.
Am I expected to put up with this sort of nonsense? Or should I take a stand? They are all coming to us for Christmas and I’m already dreading the cooking. Apparently cheese and eggs are off-limits – and even mince pies are verboten.
Virginia X from Exmoor (I’ve changed my name – for obvious reasons)
PS No point discussing things with my daughter-in-law. She’s what I would describe as a ‘hands-off mother’. Rarely lifts a finger and very happy to just let her children run riot.
Dear Virginia,
Your granddaughter’s newfound appetite for kitchen waste on a plate seems to have worked you up into a frenzy beyond reason.
Might you be upset about something else? Your daughter-in-law perhaps? Your thwarted desire to see more of your grandchildren? I can only guess.
As for the vegan Christmas, it only takes a phone call to sort it out. Call your granddaughter and explain that silly old granny doesn’t know a thing about vegan food so why doesn’t she prepare some lovely dishes to pop on the table along with the traditional Christmas spread that you’ll be providing.
The worst that can happen is that you may have to try a mouthful of some mushroom pâté served on a bed of boiled hair but at least you didn’t have to make it.
The best outcome might be that your granddaughter is too lazy and simply joins you all in an orgy of butter and breast.
Christmas is still quite a way off for a young girl with a faddish diet so who knows what she’ll want to eat by then? It is ironic that people with dietary requirements (what we used to call fussy eaters) think it makes them in some way interesting, when in fact it renders them as dull as what they eat. I know there are serious issues about hormones in meat and overfishing but is eating a free-range organic turkey so very wrong? It is Jesus’ birthday after all.
Dear Graham,
Is there an easy way to dispense with the services of my hypochondriac Polish cleaning lady? I am beginning to doubt her work ethic. The other day I found an empty gin bottle under the sofa. The surfaces had barely been dusted and my husband’s shirts had been ironed haphazardly.
When we first hired her, she worked really hard and everything sparkled. But her husband left her, and she moans about all sorts of phantom illnesses and pains.
I would feel terrible asking her to leave, as she has two children to support and I’m sure she’ll just keep drinking. But we can’t pay her just to consume our gin and flick a duster over the coffee table.
Tara K, Surrey
Dear Tara,
Those dinner parties where the entire conversation consists of people grumbling about their cleaners are unbearable. ‘I don’t know where she’s from, but they don’t have skirting boards there!’ How everyone laughs.
However, listen carefully to that smug middle-class chat and you learn that, while no one is happy with their domestic help, nobody is going to get fired. Why? Because at cleaner school, somewhere between the ironing class and basic hoovering, they hold a master class in emotional blackmail.
I don’t know anyone who has a cleaner without an awful sob story. Sick husbands, children in jail, a family abroad – take your pick. You can’t just ignore what is going on. Talk to her – you are her employer, not her friend – and explain that things need to change or you will have to find a new cleaner. Lock the drinks cabinet and hide the key. Hopefully, your hard worker will return, because if there is one thing worse than a bad cleaner it’s having to do it yourself. As the old saying goes: ‘Cleanliness is next to impossible.’
Dear Graham,
I am desperate to move to the country, but my wife is making a song and dance about it. She hates the weather and the food and is convinced the natives will be hostile. As a result we’re holed up in a tiny London flat when we could be in a rambling old farmhouse with a big garden. I grew up on Exmoor, love country pursuits and am keen that our three children have a healthy lifestyle.
We spend our city weekends traipsing around overcrowded parks with other equally miserable families and have a really pathetic quality of life. I’m convinced we would all be happier living out of London but, although I have my own business, I can’t afford to maintain two properties. How can I persuade my stubbornly metropolitan wife to be a little more open-minded?
Josh L, west London
“Climbing a tree to look at some cows is good, wholesome fun but it’s not exactly Grand Theft Auto is it?”
Dear Josh,
You may run your own business but at home your wife is clearly the CEO. The fact that you want to move to the country is never going to get Mrs Josh into a headscarf. The only way the mother of your children is ever moving beyond the smell of designer coffee is if she sees how it can benefit her.
I assume she is thinking that a larger house will simply be more work and that children involved in various outdoor pursuits will mean hours spent in a car ferrying them from one damp hell to another. The real problem here is that she’s right: a rural retreat will be lovely for you and terrific for your children while they’re young, but what’s in it for her?
You might suggest that if you had a bigger house you could get an au pair. Does she like dogs? Horse-riding? I’m clutching at straws. It puzzles me that you went ahead and had three children with someone without talking about this major issue. Weekends away could be a plan, so that she can see how happy it makes your children, but be prepared: they may hate it, too.
Climbing a tree to look at some cows is good, wholesome fun but it’s not exactly Grand Theft Auto, is it? Maybe you need to learn to love the smell of wet concrete and the sound of hysterical sirens. Focus on what makes city life great. The country may have all the stars in the night sky but we have Starbucks.
Dear Graham,
I can’t forget my ex. We split up by mutual agreement almost a year ago and I still dream and think about him every day. Each time I see a man in the street who reminds me of him in some obscure way – his loping walk, funny Tintin hair or Jay Jopling glasses – my heart stops beating and I feel as if I’m being punched in the stomach. I don’t believe we would have made one another happy, but somehow I can’t move on. He continues to haunt me. Do you have any tips for laying old ghosts to rest?
Hannah D, Humberside
Dear Hannah,
We are odd, shallow little creatures and what we believe are huge gaping holes in our hearts can usually be filled by the smallest flirtation. The reason you can’t get over your ex is most probably because you haven’t met anyone else. Given that it sounds as if you were dating Timmy Mallett with a bad leg, I’m rather surprised that you have been unable to find a replacement. But then I can’t tell from your letter what sort of unclaimed prize you might be.
If, after going out on a couple of dates with prospective beaux, you are still unable to stop thinking about the spikey-haired lurcher, then perhaps there is unfinished business. Knowing that the two of you have no long-term future together isn’t the same as reaching an end.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not suggesting that you start going out with him again but simply that you might want to have lunch to remind yourself why it won’t work.
An even simpler thing to do would be to draw your curtains, light some candles and chant quietly: ‘The hair, the walk, the glasses, the hair, the walk, the glasses’ until you come to your senses.
Dear Graham,
My boyfriend is buying a flat and, six weeks ago, I reluctantly agreed to let him move in with me unti
l the sale went through. Unfortunately, he pulled out of the purchase after discovering that drug dealers were living upstairs. He is now being very lazy about finding a new place and is settling into my tiny flat as if it were his own home. He has even asked if he can move in his furniture from storage.
The problem is that he works from home, and having no space and no privacy is driving me crazy. Before he moved in, we were madly in love, but we now argue about petty things such as unwashed breakfast plates. Sometimes I pretend to go to the shops or for a run, just to get away.
When we didn’t live together, I felt gorgeous and desirable but now I’m turning into a shrew. Yesterday, when he finished all the milk (but didn’t replace it), I completely lost it. A friend suggests I gently give him a deadline for moving out. But when I raised the subject last weekend, he wept like an abandoned child (he is Turkish). Any ideas?
Jane H, Brighton
Dear Jane,
You don’t tell me how long you have been dating your Turkish cuckoo. If it has been six months or less, then clearly you have moved in together too soon and this is a handy Reader’s Digest version of your relationship. You have reached the end much faster than you would have, but reached it you have. Be sanguine about it: you’ve lost a boyfriend but saved a lot of time.
Conversely, if you have been dating for some time, the only problem may be that you made this move without enough forethought. Why not go on holiday together? Rent a house or cottage and see if increasing the space you have to share decreases the irritation you feel.
Ask Graham Page 4
