Half life
Gorgeous long white legs
Carole Morin
An outrageous letter from my bank advised me, 'You can use money for virtu- ally anything and we make it very easy to arrange the money you're looking for. Start choosing what you want right away.'
I used to be the kind of idiot who'd book a cruise on the Oriana after encouragement like that, or at least go to Paris for a new pair of boots. Thank God for Dangerous Donald, who's spent five years convincing me about the hazards of debt.
To celebrate resisting the temptation to take out a Personal Loan, I went out to find a suitable dress to wear for a party with a surprise appearance by Sparks. Walking down Bond Street to the DICNY shop, a bad man invited me to go to Spain with him. 'You need to top up your tan,' he told me, as I was trying to remember the name of Rus and Ron's first hit, which came out when I was at primary school. 'Your legs look like plastic. Do you take them off at bedtime?' I glared without replying, the dignified way to respond to bad men. My mother warns me about them all the time. They tend to talk to you when you're minding your own business, though I'm too old to be offered sweeties.
It's undignified to lie about your age after you're 25 (unless, like God, you make yourself older) but when I visit the DICNY shop wearing flat plastic shoes, the security guard treats me like a ten year old. Women wearing really high heels get offered a Pretzel.
Going up in the glass lift, I decided if I could get to the top floor and back down again without anyone overweight getting in, I could have another pair of shoes to go with the dress. Shoes are the only sure thing in a shop. There is always at least one pair you're dying to buy. Unfortunately — or fortunately depending whether you're Dangerous Donald or me — a big woman with body odour squeezed in on the first floor. She didn't invite me on holiday with her, but stared at my white legs as if they were illegal.
As I left the shop empty-handed, Edwyn Collins was singing, 'A Girl Like You', his first hit single for years. His voice is still cool, but last week when I saw him dancing on Top of the Pops I had to hide my face in a cushion. I could never be really close friends with anyone who didn't like his band, Orange Juice, when they were young; but now when I hear Edwyn singing, I'll remember him dancing! At least I was never in love with Edwyn — just his fringe, which now looks like it's been stretched over his head to camouflage bits of baldy bane.
At the last minute, I found a dress in Zand and bought it without trying it on because the talented Hispanic designer is always accusing his customers of being too fat. 'Are you sure that's your size?' he asks innocently. He hasn't caught on that in England there's a conspiracy to flatter fat- ties, a size 8 is really a 10 — or sometimes even a 12.
I used to be shocked when I went to a party and there was nobody dancing, but at the music biz do I was horrified to see a dance floor in the dark basement. Retired pop stars mingled with girls with bad skin. There's no hope for teens who look awful in dim lighting and watching ugly people dance is truly terrible. None of them were dancing — yet — but the free vodka might remedy that.
A woman with hennaed hair cornered Dangerous Donald. She works in the pre- dictable world of pop, but is a poet in her spare time. He snobbed her out by saying, 'An intellectual in the music business is like a millionaire in lira.'
I was dying to see Sparks, but also des- perate to go home and take a really long shower. Sparks was one of the first bands Maddie used me and my brother as an excuse to go and see. 'People will think I'm your big sister,' she said as we argued about who had to sit beside her. The following week we put our feet down when she tried to wear a jumpsuit to the Gary Glitter con- cert. 'We'd rather not go than be seen with you,' we said. She burst into tears and changed into a jersey Jaeger dress. Her behaviour improved as soon as she'd wiped the rainbow glitter off her crow's feet. You are what you wear.
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