FROM OUR ARCHIVE
The way we were
Last week, I had lunch with a rather sexy man in a very smart restaurant. He said he wanted to talk about my next book, but I could tell he really fancied me. He’d been plying me with red wine and listening to me really attentively; he really couldn’t keep his eyes off me, especially my mouth. Well, we all know what that means. I went home feeling like Julia Roberts.
As soon as I got home I went to my bedroom and smiled slightly soppily at myself in the mirror. There was a large piece of spinach stuck between my two front teeth and a red wine moustache at the corners of my smiling mouth. I shall never be able to look that man in the eye again, certainly not with my mouth open.
Embarrassment is something you don’t grow out of. You think that when you’re a composed 30-, 40- or whatever-something, you’ll be able to laugh off losing your knickers, unseemly underarm stains, etc. You don’t. Rather the reverse; one’s dignity grows in importance along with the wrinkles.
Children are an endless source of embarrassment. My friend Wendy has carefully taught her children the proper names for all those body bits; standing behind a short man in a supermarket queue recently, her 4-year-old daughter asked, in a piercing whisper, if she thought the man had a short penis, too? Another friend took her daughter and her daughter’s friend (both 3ish) to the post office. She deposited them on some chairs while she queued, and was gradually aware of a growing silence. Suddenly, a clear voice rang out: ‘This is my vagina.’ Turning around, she saw the friend (knickers removed) pointing out the relevant area, and her own daughter peering, fascinated.
One of my more interesting memories, is arriving at a 60s fancy-dress party dressed in an original white lace mini and white shiny boots, with a slightly moth-eaten 60s hairpiece on my head, and my husband in denims, love beads and a fake George Harrison moustache, only to see car after car pull up and discharge guests in little black dresses and dark suits. They had all phoned the hostess one by one to ask if they really had to dress up in costume, and were told not to if they didn’t want to. My husband went home to change immediately, but your stout-hearted columnist went in, head and hairpiece held high, to an astonished roomful...