Further Under the Duvet (10 page)

Our second night’s sleep was no better than the first so we decided to call it a day and go back to Dublin early. A vein beneath my eye was starting to twitch.

‘When we get home we’ll clear the mice droppings out of the shed,’ Himself suggested. I tried to smile and that set the jumping vein off again.

As we were dragging our bags back to the car, the stairs-clatterers were emerging from their front door, and the oddest thing was how normal they looked – a tubby man, a woman carrying a baby, and a granny-type person. They didn’t look like nutters who got their kicks by non-stop pounding up and down stairs. In fact, none of them looked
capable
of the sustained physical activity that had been going on.

I gave them a curt nod, but I just couldn’t find it in me to be any friendlier. As we walked to the car, the man called, ‘Excuse me!’

For a moment I thought he was going to apologize, that he and his family had been in training for the forthcoming stairs-clattering championships and that they needed all the practice they could get. But instead he started complaining!

‘We can hear you, constantly talking, laughing –’

Laughing? Crying, more like!

‘You woke the baby twice. Can you keep the noise down?’

I looked at Himself. This was too weird. Perhaps it was time for a sing-song.

NO, NAY, NEVER, NO, NAY, NEVER NO MOAAAAARE.

Previously unpublished.

Recently I went on holiday to Bhutan, a small, unspoilt Buddhist kingdom in the foothills of the Himalayas. It’s existed in self-imposed isolation for decades and has only recently opened for business. It’s all forests, mountains, single-lane roads, sheer three-thousand-foot drops to the valley below and people in funny – compulsory – national dress. (The men have to wear argyle-patterned knee-socks and oversized dressing gowns, hitched up over a waistbelt to create a charming blouson effect. Look it up on the net if you don’t believe me.)

I thought Bhutan would be fascinating, and indeed it was, but it was only after I’d arrived that I discovered the main reason people go there is to ‘trek’.

Trekking. Even the word annoys me. And ‘rambling’ – there’s another one. It’s
walking
and giving it a fancy title changes nothing. The thing is, exercise and I have never really seen eye to eye. (I do yoga. About once a year.) Nor have the ‘outdoors’ and I. Walking the thirty yards from the car park to the shops I sometimes get an earache. So when I go on holiday, my normally sedentary lifestyle goes down several gears, until I’m practically flatlining.

But after a week of non-stop Buddhist temples, I was ready for a change and when our guide suggested ‘a nice, easy
walk’ Himself looked at me with desperate, pleading eyes and I was persuaded.

‘But you’ll need flat shoes,’ the guide said, looking at my boots.

‘These
are
flat,’ I replied. They had only two-and-a-half-inch heels, what was he talking about?

He handed me a brushed-steel and latex ‘walking pole’ and the three of us set off. It was a lot more uphill than I’d been led to expect, but between the fir trees, the clear blue sky, the stunning views, the blood flowing in my veins, my heart pounding in my chest (but not too much), the way the air smelt exactly like Fanta – suddenly I got it. I felt great.

We stopped at a seventh-century Buddhist monastery, where we met a monk who looked unnervingly like Graham Norton in orange panstick and a red robe. Appropriately enough he ‘blessed’ me with an eighteen-inch phallus, which could have come straight from Ann Summers, but apparently was some ancient artefact. It was only then that I discovered that people come from around the globe to this monastery to get pregnant. I didn’t get the deluxe fertility treatment, which involves several monks, chanting and burning things, but all the same, if I get up the duff, I’ll let you know.

Then we carried on through the deserted forest, passing a three-hundred-year-old stupa (holy sort-of-shrine yoke) and I nearly died of fright when I saw a small girl, nestled in one of its hollows, eating what appeared to be a pan pipe.

Finally we reached the top and the sense of achievement was indescribable.

Exhilarated, I leant on my pole, surveying the valley, feeling like Sir Edmund Hillary.

It was a moment of personal epiphany: I can be different. I can change. I will become a trekker. Or a rambler. Whichever is better. I will buy a pole. And proper flat walking boots. I would have a ‘hobby’, an ‘interest’. Up to that point if anyone had asked me what my ‘interests’ were, I’d have replied, ‘Handbags, KitKats, Dermot O’Leary.’

A new exciting future unrolled itself in front of me, for inspection. I’d be strong, sinewy, as thin as a whippet. (I saw myself looking a bit like Paula Radcliffe.) All my holidays would be spent heading off with a rucksack full of high-protein bars to climb the Andes and the like. I might even lose the tops of a couple of fingers to frostbite and everyone would think I was fabulous. People would ask me why I climbed the highest peaks in the world (I had mutated from being an ordinary trekker to a mountaineer) and I would reply, ‘Why do dogs lick their balls? Because they can, Oprah, because they can.’ And nobody would think I was vulgar.

From now on I would only wear tracksuits made out of those high-tech fabrics which can stop a speeding bullet but weigh less than a feather. I would never wear skirts except on special occasions when, although I would be lovely and slim, my calves would be bunched and enormous in my high heels and my legs would be bandy. I would look like a transvestite, exactly like Tony Curtis in
Some Like it Hot
. But I wouldn’t care. The broken veins in my cheeks wouldn’t matter, either. I would have a solid, cast-iron identity.

Then I got home from Bhutan and unpacked and looked at the mountain of shite arrayed on my bed – stuff I’d bought while I was away. Mesmerized, I was picking things up and
wondering:
what the fuck…?
Hand-woven throws which would make my home look like a social worker’s. Hand-woven bags which had seemed extraordinarily charming at the time but that I wouldn’t be seen dead with now. A hand-woven passport holder. Hand-woven oven gloves – back then it hadn’t mattered
at all
that they weren’t insulated. Funny brass things that might be door handles. Or ceremonial cups. A cowbell. Seven Buddhas of varying sizes. A prayer wheel. Awful gaudy wall hangings that you’d see in low-rent Chinese restaurants.

Why, why,
why
? What had I been thinking? I sat in my hand-woven hell and waited for sanity to return. Which it did.

It has been several weeks since my return. I have not yet purchased my walking pole.

First published in
Marie Claire,
May 2005
.

I was eleven years of age and a friend and I were messing around with my mother’s make-up. Until that day, I’d been happy enough just trying her lipstick and eyebrow pencil, but suddenly emboldened by some strange impulse I smeared myself from hairline to jawline with foundation (orange, as was the fashion at the time) and couldn’t believe the transformation. An upgraded version of me was looking back from the mirror. I looked like myself, only far, far nicer. My eyes were greener, my hair looked shinier, everything was smoother and better.

My friend, too, was astounded. ‘You look…’ She groped for the most appropriate compliment. ‘You look…
Spanish
!’ No greater praise. At the time (mid-seventies) it was what we all wanted – to obscure our shameful blue-white Irish skin beneath a see-it-from-the-moon Jaffa-style glow.

For the first time I became aware of the transforming qualities of make-up. It could rebuild me, make me a better version of me. From the word go I was enslaved.

My attitude to life has always been that if a small bit of something was good, then a big bit was even better. So right from the beginning I was a little heavy-handed in my make-up application. Luckily these were the days when Irish women wore their foundation to be noticed – the foundation, I
mean, not the women. Foundation was almost regarded as an accessory in its own right, like a piece of jewellery or a tattoo. And no one had any truck with the idea of matching foundation to your skin-tone. Why would you do that? You’d end up looking exactly like yourself!

Instead, orange was the shade du jour. It was a good colour, a noble colour, a sexy colour. And just in case you weren’t quite orange enough you could always give yourself an extra going-over with some coloured face powder. (Orange, of course. Or maybe pink, just for the variety.)

None for your neck, though. Necks remained as white as God had intended them to be. Back then you were
no one
if you didn’t sport an orange tidemark and a matching dodgy line on your collar.

It wasn’t just foundation, though; I was mad about it all – lipsticks, blushers, eyeliners, mascaras… I once read a magazine article asking which single beauty product you’d bring to a desert island and I tied myself in absolute knots over it. I narrowed it down to the big three: lipstick, mascara or base – but I couldn’t decide which. It used to keep me awake at nights. Even now, if I’ve run out of normal worries, and am looking for something good to worry about, it fills the gap admirably.

The great thing about cosmetics (in my opinion, and yes, I know it’s shallow; for a spirited defence, see below) is that they keep inventing new things – and I’ve bought them all: concealers, brow highlighters, skin primers, blending brushes, double-ended eyeliners, slanted sponges, tinted moisturizer… (Mind you, in my early days I thought tinted moisturizer existed to be worn beneath your foundation. For extra orangeness, like.)

My bathroom drawers are like a cosmetic museum. Clear mascara, anyone? Eyelash primer? Pillar-box red lipstick? I’ve stuff dating back to the early eighties: crimson eyeshadow, puce blusher, blue mascara. Plus a good few relics from the red-lipsticked, power-made-up yuppie years, and several other bits and pieces, right up to the high-tech, light-diffusing, natural-looking present. (Imagine, I have lived long enough to see Irish women match their base to their skin-tone. Truly I have lived through turbulent times.)

The love affair has never waned: make-up always makes me feel better. With it I am more confident, more articulate, more amusing. But it took far longer for me to start caring about my skin. I thought: oh skin! That old yoke! Sleep in your make-up – who cares! The important thing is that you have make-up to sleep
in
!

But somewhere along the line I changed and now I have so much skincare that to get into my bathroom you have to run at the door with your shoulder and push hard.

For me, the pleasure starts with the packaging. Ripping off the cellophane, opening the cardboard box, trying to find the instructions in English, unscrewing the lid, tearing off the tinfoil seal, then finally reaching the magic stuff within. (Yes, shallow
and
very wasteful of the earth’s resources, I
know
. As I said, see spirited defence below.)

So what about the extravagant claims the skincare manufacturers make. Do I believe them? Well, yes!

And no.

Basically, it depends.

When I was a teenager, I heard a report on the radio, an
exposé of face creams. (Hadn’t they anything better to do exposés on? At a time when Ireland was jackknifed from corruption? I swear to God.) Anyway, they picked on a particular brand whose press release promised that their night-cream molecules would ‘enter’ the skin and restructure from within. The crackshot journalist concluded that this was as impossible as pushing potatoes through the holes in muslin weave. I tried not to listen, I tried not to be influenced, but it left me with a healthy dose of scepticism.

I know that nothing is going to reverse time. Apart from a deal with the devil, of course, and at the moment he’s refusing to return my calls.

But, at worst, using so much night cream that I slide off my pillow, can’t do me any harm. And if it’s not doing me any good, it doesn’t matter because I never use anything for more than a few months. Unlike po-faced French women who use the same brand from the age of fourteen until their deathbed, I’m a product slut. I love them all. If face creams were husbands, then I am Elizabeth Taylor.

The thing is that I’ll try each product on its merits and I’ll draw my own conclusions, and there are some products that I
know
make a difference. I’ve seen it with my own two (kohl-rimmed, mascara’d) eyes. It’s probably not fair to single out a special few for mention when there are so many good brands, but I’m going to anyway.

Example: after using Crème de la Mer for a month, I was looking so well that I was accused of having had botox.

Example: if I have a late night and use Jo Malone’s protein serum before going to sleep, instead of waking up with a face like a pair of greying, saggy y-fronts, I look like I’ve had my full sixteen hours.

Example: if I’ve been hitting the chocolate hard and look spotty and sluggish, a go of Elizabeth Arden’s Peel and Reveal will sort me out.