The Skunk

My back is getting better - except I am not going to say "my back" any more, I am going to say "my lumbago", because lumbago is such an amazing word, like a seaside resort in Wales. Of course, I may not actually have lumbago, there's nobody except for Dr Google to diagnose me, but it makes me happy to think that I might, and happiness is a great analgesic. Anyway, the lumbago is improving, though it's still very painful to lean forward, which means that I can't put on trousers or shave my legs - a terrible combination.  Why am I still shaving my legs? It's not as if I am expecting a pizza delivery any time soon. My parents don't care if my legs are hairy or not, and nobody else is close enough to see (I'm reasonably sure that my leg hair density is not visible at a distance of over two metres.) Well, actually I know the answer to that question. It's because I'm vain. Even when my audience is only myself, I'm still vain. I'm so vain. I don't think that particular song is about me, mainly because I would never wear an apricot scarf, but if someone I knew wrote a song called 'stop fussing about in the mirror, you look fine' it might well be.  When my parents moved into this house, one of the things they did was to remove thirteen mirrors from the room that is now serving as my bedroom. This is not a hilarious exaggeration, the previous occupant had reflective surfaces everywhere. But there are still three large mirrors in that bedroom, and a mirror which runs the length of the entire wall in the bathroom, with a magnifying shaving mirror attached at one end, which means that I can look at the side of my face when I am brushing my teeth. When I got here, I started noticing that every morning when I wake up I have crease marks on my cheeks from the pillow, which I found kind of funny, until I realised that they were still there in the evening, and they aren't pillow marks, they are WRINKLES.  You guys: I am not OK with having wrinkles. If you were to say to me, 'Marie, there are more important things to worry about right now than your face,' I would agree with you, but a part of me would still be wailing what could be more important than my face? Because - how can I put this more clearly - it's my face. I am totally fine with other people getting wrinkles, I am absolutely 100% on board with the narrative that they are a beautiful way of telling the story of your life and the wisdom of your years, I am entirely in favour of wrinkles on my friends, who have never looked more lovely, or on Dame Judi Dench, but not on MY FACE. Especially these two not-pillow-mark lines on each side that are sloping downwards and are not where I would have placed my wrinkles, if I'd been given the option to draw them on (happy upwards inclines around the eyes, since you ask.) It's just as well we're all in lockdown so I don't run straight to Harley Street begging for the Botox needle.  While we're on the subject, I haven't dyed my hair since before I went to Costa Rica and I haven't been able to get any more and now it's all washing out (I use a semi-permanent dye, less hair damage and more realistic regrowth - ask me how!!) and I can see all my grey hair and while that's interesting on an anthropological level, you guys: I am not OK with having grey hair. I still remember getting my first grey hair. It was the day Prince Charles visited my college, when I was a final year student. I was 21. I was revising for my finals in the library when someone came along and made us all go outside and line up in a row because Prince Charles was coming. Someone else had gone up to the roof and was trying to fly the Union Jack (pedants move aside, I know we don't call it that unless we are at sea, but are we not, metaphorically, all at sea right now?) but there was a dispute about which way up it went so there was a lot of yelling back and forth and hoisting and rehoisting of the flag. Then Prince Charles arrived at the gate. Whoever was on the roof left the flag alone. Prince Charles walked up to the row of students that had been plucked from the library and everyone took a step forward, except for me, who took a step back. He shook all our hands (well - one hand each) and mumbled some small talk which I am sad to say I do not recall. Afterwards, I went to the loo - the one next the chapel, which was famously the best, which is to say most private, loo in college - and I looked in the mirror and there is was. My first grey hair. I have been a republican ever since.  Anyway my natural hair colour is an extremely dark brown, so each grey hair looks like it has been drawn on in white paint. I've been dying the grey out for years. Just to my natural hair colour, which is to say my unnatural hair colour, given that my natural hair colour is in fact now stripy black and white, like a badger, or a skunk. I am not ready for my skunk years. Do skunks have wrinkles? Who would get close enough to know? Actually, perhaps the skunk should be the mascot for our times, because it is the master of social distancing.  Which brings me to today, right now, in all my grey-haired, wrinkled, hairy-legged, lumbagoed reality. I guess it's true what they say (actually, I haven't heard anybody say this, but I'm assuming someone is saying it somewhere, because it is so obvious): this virus is bringing me face to wrinkled face with my mortality. And if I could choose one of those things to change, one of them to magically go away and never come back? It would be the lumbago. So maybe I'm not that vain after all. But I am never - EVER - going to stop walking into parties like I am walking onto a yacht.