Thursday 21 May 2009

A day like no other.

It's been an extraordinary couple of days really. Young Master needs reading glasses, we find, so they're on order; I wish I could get 2 pairs for £20! So now MiniMe is even more of a MiniMe - even their glasses match.

But it's yesterday that really sticks in my mind. From the minute I got up and made my way into town to have coffee with Arrabella people seemed to be falling over themselves to help me. Or maybe they were diving out from under my scooter wheels.

Freya is a little thing, with a turning circle of 2.76 centimetres. She breaks up into little pieces when needed. She was red once; but now owned by an anarchist, she has a three-way colour scheme with no 2 pieces in a pair of strips the same colour. She is blue and red and grey, and so will go with any colour scheme I choose to wear. Apart of course from lilac, pink, beige, brown - I never wear yellow - and green among others. But at least I'd never lose her on a shopping spree.

So whether it was survival instinct and an effort to escape being mown over at a very slow 4mph, or whether through sheer niceness of being humans sharing a sunny day in a pretty nice town to live in, I received help, excellent service, understanding, humour, and even an offer to split a bogoff on hair colour, that alas came to nothing. A 5-minute friendship is what Young Master called it in the car later; and it was just that, a temporary link of like-mindedness in someone of a similar age, well she was probably somewhat older than me, but not by much I'd say.

I now have two wardrobes. One in one size for when I'm not on medication, am or have been exercising, or else so ill I haven't eaten for a fortnight. The other is for reality days when nothing I want to wear fits any more. I have elastic bingo wings that seem to spread and contract on an almost daily basis, so just never know whether I'll get my arms into sleeves or not on any given day. My new day-old wardrobe is an eclectic collection of whites, reds and blacks, with a touch of navy and khaki thrown in for good measure. At least I'm going to feel comfortable and hopefully look nice this summer. But even the push-up bras I bought last summer, that give a lovely smooth profile under teeshirts with none of the wobble factor associated in F-G cups look saggy now.

I'm cross about my hair too. It's been cut into layers, after years of being a gorgeous bob in one length. I don't quite know how this mistake happened; but now it pokes out all over the place, has absolutely no shape and I can literally do nothing with it but stick it all behind my ears. Ho hum. It'll grow, but until then I'll feel messy no matter what I'm wearing. Hang ups are so funny.

Anyway on my way home last night, trundling along several hours after Freya's battery should have given out by rights, I passed a woman in white of a certain age. She didn't know she was of a certain age, that's for sure. She was tall, curvy in all the right places without being overblown in any of them, a bottle straw blonde, but beautiful with it. As I approached her, she held her face up to the rays of the 5 o'clock sun, and seemed to revel in its feel on her face, in a movement that was sensuous and unconscious. It was one of those moments that I think women can and do share comfortably with each other without sexual overtones, and I shared in her rejoice of the sun. It was uplifting. And I realised how little it would take to make me that woman - if only I had a decent bloomin haircut that is!

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