Once upon a time, I worked for a bloke from
Belfast whose
voice could melt glass, especially after a curry. Anyway, in a mere 18 months, he taught me
about planning computer systems and the terrible things that might happen at
interfaces when two worlds collide in a global food business. He had also developed an
obsessive relationship with the work-life balance, and expressed a pathological
disinterest in any work-related nostalgia; actively discouraging it in the
workplace as a “useless waste of time”. Maybe it is, unless you’re in long-term occupational
therapy.
So why, after a mere three weeks in Job2 do
I find myself looking over my shoulder at the Retail Cathedral with a gentle
tear in my eye and overwhelmed by a whole bucket of nostalgia? Despite its many
failings and false starts, I believe it had comfort and familiarity, not to
mention holiday/sick pay and bonuses of a kind.
Now those perks are gone and I’m feeling quite isolated in what appears
on the surface to be a girls’ school where no-one’s moved on for the last 20
years. Sorry, I should know, I went to
an all-girls school and the whiff of hormones could choke you at times.
So with nostalgia in mind, I’m looking over
my shoulder with fondness for the beauty industry and have decided to share the
great truths I’ve learned before moving swiftly on:
- In uniform, you are invisible to the customer. At the start of the Boxing Day sale, you will be trampled underfoot if you stand between the customer and a perceived bargain.
- “I’m looking for moisture cream” is a euphemism for “I am the grumpy mystery shopper and unless you stick to the script, I will mark your store as a zero!”
- No cream on earth will remove eye bags, freckles, or make your hair grow quicker.
- I feel this has to be said – you are who you are and NOTHING you take, rub on or inject will make you white if you’re not already Caucasian by birth. Don’t believe me? Ask Sir Alec Jeffries, he who invented DNA profiling at Leicester University.
- Do not buy face stuff off the Internet unless someone you know is already using it with magnificent results. You have no idea what goes into that little pot of crushed diamonds and sheep placenta [yes really, and that one costs £120.]
- Blue contact lenses over brown eyes will make you look creepy, and not in a good way. People will stare because they’re wrong on so many levels.
So, believing in the power of natural
beauty, how did I end up at one of those Cosmetic Surgery evenings with a chum
who must remain nameless ‘on pain of death’?
Well that’s what she told me anyway.
What an eye-opener? Or not if you’ve
had a couple of jabs of Botox, then you can’t quite open your eyes because the
muscles are pole-axed and your forehead’s not going to work for months. Another friend had it done recently and ended
up with a 'Roger Moore eyebrow'.
I was sorely tempted by a jab of filler for
a line I’ve acquired by doing Elvis impersonations. I can sizzle sometimes but I’ve never smoked and
the dreaded line is fast turning into a groove, despite massaging it with Estee
Lauder’s Advance Night Repair serum. Soon,
it will need a magician to remove it. But
you wouldn’t believe where they stick the hypodermic and if you’re having
filler …well, you do know it’s got to go somewhere when it breaks down, don’t
you?
Adding to the debate for aesthetic surgery,
my eye fell on a leaflet detailing the full work-up on laser hair removal. Read carefully Ravens for the total-body
package includes your lady garden and transcends the whole “smooth as a baby’s
bum” feeling, permanently. I didn’t know
whether to laugh or cry so I carefully replaced the price leaflet in the rack
and selected some alternative reading material whilst my anonymous friend was
poked about by a hypo-happy doctor. Did
you know there’s a fantastic new treatment for haemorrhoids?
Tip of the Blog: Just in time for Halloween, a Raven turned up
on Merlin last night looking very
spruce and all demonic in tatty feathers. Who knows what the episode was about
but I watch it religiously, utterly fascinated by Colin Morgan’s
ability to disguise his gorgeous Northern Irish accent with a
weird-kind-of-anal-English voice. Pity,
because Merlin was Welsh.
Raven
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