R & R

I had a few days in London at the weekend. The sun shone, the wine flowed, the chit chatted and I saw lots of lovely friendies including a few of the kind of men I never see at home. A change really is as good as a rest, not that we parasites ever really need a rest but we appreciate one and it was nice to escape the packing and even my beloved skip for a few days.

Not my usual kind of chap #1
On Friday morning as I wandered the shops of Knightsbridge in a Nurofen daze, post-eyebrow threading and a little bit morning after, I decided to make a small detour on my way to lunch with the Babe Mamas to look in on Abercrombie & Fitch. I had heard it was a rewarding retail experience. The front of the shop looks like it might be the head office. It doesn’t look shoppy. No windowsful of wares, no branding splashed across its frontage, no lights, just a douce little sign on low-key double doors. I only just spotted it from the other side of the street and crossed over to investigate. The door opened and there standing before me was a half dressed nineteen year-old boy/man. I was in the right place. The half that was dressed was snugly encased in low-slung jeans. I didn’t see what he was wearing on his feet but he was naked from the jeans up. Naked, tanned, muscley, toned, smooth and blemishless with blue eyes and hair which involved too much obvious product, but in a good way. I glanced quickly at him and carried on into the dark interior of the shop. It is like being in a vast club on several floors. The multitude of shop assistants, male and female are all gorgeous and young and the music is LOUD, except in the fitting rooms where the same music is at a more contemplative level. Lots of the staff were dancing alone and with each other. The non-dancers were more attentive than the dancers but they were all friendly. Each had a sector of at least two or three piles of t-shirts to patrol which they did beautifully and to the very best of their pulchritudinous, expensively educated ability. The girl whose job it was to chat up old ladies even admired my trousers.
I tried not to squint at the sizes in the darkness or draw attention in any other way to the fact that I was definitely the oldest person there buying clothes for myself. The t-shirt, I promised myself as I left the fitting room, I would only wear in the garden and the sweatshirt only to the gym.
As I left, my old coolness reflex tried to kick in and was about to prevent even a peek in the direction of the half naked one. But just in time I remembered that I am 38 and was therefore invisible to half naked one and his co-workers on manning the door duty. Also I had just spent £85 in the shop and was going to get my money’s worth. So I had a good long look, top to toe to top and went out into the sunshine smiling.


Not my usual kind of chap #2
Dressing up a bit was going to be required for a Saturday night out with the laydeez so I removed the Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt I had been wearing all day, showered and replaced it with a little floaty tea dress. I applied proper foundation, took infinite care with my eye make-up (smokey) and zhuzhed my hair. I lip-glossed and Jo Maloned and forsook my usual huge hold-all for a more elegant small evening bag. The Blonde Adonis is the best turned-out and one of the best looking men I know and I had no reason to think that his new (to me) boyfriend or their friend, the Altar Boy would be unkempt either. (Although we did establish during the evening that none of them has ever had a back, sack and crack wax.) We started the night necking delicious cocktails and looking at pictures of Blonde Adonis and Perfect Boyfriend’s new dog. I think the dog is a good sign. It is also immaculate – the glossiest puppy I have ever seen. I bet it even smells good. We talked about mastitis for a bit, not that I brought it up, and got through a range of other bodily functions too. And of course we talked all about art and politics and the credit crunch. We even got onto the whole altar boy/priest thing. The answers are yes, yes and yes. But only once the Altar Boy had reached the age of consent and left home.

As I stood giggling and swaying and talking nonsense with everyone else on the tube home Blonde Adonis read my mind. “You’ll be out of all this and back in the country this time tomorrow,” he said. He was right. And as I left the train I was glad of all their lovely hugs.