Sunday, May 01, 2005

A Bit Mad

As part of my continuing quest to spend every single penny of the money I haven't got on pointless and transient rubbish, I paid a visit yesterday to my "stylist", Christophe.

I can only assume that Christophe interpreted my indecisive, monosyllabic mutterings as "please make my hair look like a particularly messy and overgrown birds' nest, to the extent that people phenomenally more attractive and groomed than I will point at me in the street and, if they have any, shield their children's eyes. And then please charge me an arbitrary but eye-wateringly large sum of money for the privilege."

All the while he was creating this distressed confection he was making oily observations like "you have beautiful curly hair" and "it's very fine, but there's a lot of it. A lot." Which (misguidedly) made me feel that with just a bit more effort than I'll ever be prepared to put in, I too could look like Madonna. Or Sting.

"I dunno Christophe, it looks a bit mad," I said as he presented me with a mirror in which to admire his masterwork of art naif. "It's beautiful," he replied. Yeah. I bet the bastard laughed all the way home.

Yesterday wasn't all bad, though. My business partner H. and I got caught in the tractor beam (that's no moon, that's a beauty counter, etc.) of Gift Time at Lancome, and ended up spending hundreds of pounds on cosmetics we didn't understand just so we could get a free make-up bag to throw on the pile of other free make-up bags we've accumulated in this manner. Which is probably just the sort of thing that Albert Camus had in mind when he dreamed up all that stuff about absurdity.

Still, it was all a splendid antidote to this very sad Wilco album I've downloaded from iTunes. More money well spent. Hurrah for capitalism!

8 comments:

nibus said...

people...will point at me in the street and, if they have any, shield their childrens' eyes

It might have changed since my time, but I can't remember Acton's residents walking around with children's eyes, though I have suspicions that the Afghan pizza "restaurant" on Horn Lane was a major distributor.

And if I was Lynne Truss I'd take you to task over the apostrophe in "childrens'". But I'm not, so I won't. Cough.

patroclus said...

I don't know *what* you're talking about. Cough.

cello said...

Mmm. I think the apostrophe is spot on, Nibus.

patroclus said...

Ahh, the power of the "Edit" button...

cello said...

I see. Will you promise to edit my boo-boos too? Other people can live with their shame, but I just get eaten up inside. There are topics I can't revisit on the C4 forum in case I bump into a previous gaffe.

patroclus said...

I've never known you make any kind of gaffe, cello! And revisiting topics on the C4 forum is always good for a laugh. Ahhh, happy days. If only they didn't delete the old threads all the time.

James Henry said...

"that's no moon, that's a beauty counter"

Funny.

Jane said...

Thanks for commenting on my blog.

It's nice to see that some else has heard of Ada Lovelace! The role of women in computing is woefully under presented.

As for make up bags, spending too much on make up I don't actually need is how I get most of mine but it's the freebies inside em I like I've got most of my best lipsticks that way.