Retail Therapy

Three days and counting until the big 4-0….

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I interrupt this blog for a public service announcement.  You may be interested/glad to know that I have removed all my creative writing from Hello Wall onto a new blog: http://supperandsyntax.com

This is to spare you all, unless you are gluttons for punishment. In which case, do pop over/sign up for new post and leave marvellous comments.

My latest post is a 100 Word Challenge – and a homage to a certain silver-haired celebrity chef.

As you were.

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Today I am taking my eldest daughter out for a bit of ‘just you and me’ time.  And shopping.  She started life as a Boden-clad, cute as a button little girl and then she grew up a bit, lost (and finally replaced) her two from teeth, remains skinny as a rake and somewhere in this morphing out of little girl into medium-sized girl, we have lost all sense of fashion.  Not that I am into child fashion AT ALL, but I do want her to look nice, have an outfit rather than a jumble on and allow her to have some autonomy on the subject.

Yesterday, she came down in yellow jeans, turquoise tee, vivid pink hoodie and brown boots. At 8am it was scarring on my still tired eyes. I took her back upstairs and diplomatically suggested some other combination, but when routing around I realised she has a real mish-mash of stuff.  So I have decided to treat her to a few carefully chosen items in order to sort out her wardrobe. At 8 she is too old for little girl pinafores (alas) but, in my opinion, too young for stuff that looks like it belongs in Topshop.  So we are off to Primani (cheap and plentiful), H&M (reasonably priced and some great clothes – see these boots I got for £5.99 the other day!) and M&S/Gap (Mummy’s choice). To be fair, she doesn’t give two hoots where she gets it from and has, thankfully, no comprehension of labels, price or trend. Or colour coordination it seems.

Talking of outfits, I still have no idea what to wear for my ‘drown my sorrows’ birthday night in the pub.  Trying to capture elegance, youth (ahem), casual, and slenderness all in one magic outfit is a tough call.  I am sure it will be the usual mania before we go out, I will fling on whatever is clean and hope for the best.

Where did those days go?  You know, the ones where getting ready for a night out involved a Bacardi breezer, hours in the bathroom, trying on 20 outfits before reverting to the first, dancing around the living room, watching a Blind Date and finally congregating at a friends’ house for a glass of Soave whilst waiting for the mini-cab?  Now I am lucky if I

a) have a night out at all

b) get to change out of what I have been wearing all day

c) have the energy to wash my hair, let alone dance

d) get to watch anything that doesn’t involve Mike the Knight, Dora the Explore or Tracy Beaker.

Ah, those heady days of being a twenty something….

Age, like a ghost in pac-man, is lurking around every corner, coming up faster than you expect and only when you take some special pills* do you feel like you can conquer it. But they soon wear off and there it is, cornering you until it’s Game Over.

Alternatively (and I am guessing by now you want to give me a big cyber slap around the head and shout ‘get a grip woman’) I could forget my rather bizarre pac-man analogy and think ‘Life begins at 40′!

Yes, it DOES! But, the second half.

*by special pills, I mean a couple of large glasses of wine.  But it does make you re-think what pac-man was up to….