Columns from The Weekend West
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Middle Ground
A hair salon is a dangerous place for an existential crisis. Propped in a padded chair, I wear a black plastic cape like a shroud. A black hand-towel encircles my neck, fastened tightly at my throat with a press-stud. The young hairstylist stands behind me and slops her brush into a puddle of hair dye on her trolley. She carves a centre parting along my scalp then slaps her loaded brush back and forth across my greying head as if she’s painting a picket fence.
At some point, every client at the hairdressers must confront their reflection. And so, reluctantly, I drop my Woman’s Day and examine my mirror image. I’m pinned under a beam of white light from a ceiling as black as my middle-aged despair. (Salon lighting is designed to show off your hair at the expense of your face).
In Another Life
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to be anymore,” said a woman’s voice. I swivelled to take in the two 50-something suburbanites at the next table. A busty redhead was resplendent in purple. Her friend, a diminutive blonde, was listening attentively. The cafe buzzed with the mid-morning coffee crowd.
“I don’t know whether to be a walk-over or a ball-breaker,” I heard the redhead say. And then she caught my eye and harrumphed: “Now there’s a topic for your article!”
I was startled to be recognised, preferring to be an incognito columnist. But the redhead smiled and shuffled her chair towards me. “You know what?” she said. “I’m 51. Divorced. Worked all my life, own my own place. And the single men I meet? They want a maid. A hooker. Or their mothers!”
The Naked Truth
My days as a nudist are numbered. Last week, in the mad rush to get my brood to school on time, I streaked past my husband on the way to the laundry to collect some knickers from the drier. Normally I’d have covered up with a towel, but I was feeling frisky, so I thought I’d give him an eyeful and set him up for his day at the office.
He was sitting on a kitchen stool eating Weetbix, absorbed in the newspaper. He glanced up as I sashayed past. I remembered the deportment coach from school telling us that a woman’s derriere is mesmerising to a man. I now get what she was on about – all that roundness and pertness, the curve of the waist giving way to the swell of the hips. So I floated by the kitchen bench on tiptoes knowing this would make my width taller and my cheeks cheekier. With a toss of my head, I shot him a wink over my shoulder.
Mutton dressed as man
My husband is so fashion forward he thinks he’s the new black. Apparently, the new black is a portly but cute middle-aged father of three with Henry Kissinger glasses decked out in an electric yellow Polo shirt and cargo shorts with a hammer holder.
He’s not alone – I know other charismatic men of a certain age who dress smartly at the office, but who throw caution to the wind at weekends and go out in public looking like a one man sailing regatta – all stripes and baggywrinkled Bermudas – convinced they’re the ship’s biscuit.
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