So, keen to try out my new Raclette machine, I decided to throw a dinner party, inviting my neighbours, including he who got a view of my not-so-good side over the garden fence. Having avoided him since inadvertently mooning him one embarrassing morning, I still don’t know what it was he “wondered whether I fancied”. As he’s rather fanciable (from the neck up, anyhow. I’ve never seen his actual body. It might be festooned in a flowery dress below-fence), I quite fancy finding out. Raclette, btw, is a
staple of wintertime in Switzerland. Ingredients consisting: raclette cheese, small potatoes, gherkins, dried meats (prosciutto, parma ham, etc). You can also add sliced peppers, tomato, onion, mushrooms… pretty much anything really, which suits someone who has the gadget but definitely not the Goddess gene.
The Raclette machine is basically a grill, placed centre-table on which one’s guests cook their own, which also sounds like a plan. Not wanting any awkward silences, as per my last dinner party (my Mississippi Mud Pie was definitely to die… after), I decided to add a guaranteed ice-breaker to the menu: A murder mystery! Well, as they’re all to dress their parts, it will get the guests talking ~ and at least if they’re DIYing foodwise, they won’t actually die.
Splendid. I’m good to go. Ingredients shopped for in record time and hair trimmed and restyled (bobbed, but not too short at the back), I skip upstairs to try on my own murder mystery ensemble, my tri-legged dog, Sadie, bounding enthusiastically up after me. Humming happily, I squeeze into my figure-skimming bandeau dress with boned bodice and fan-tail detail. I’m playing Farra Fullup, a beautiful and temperamental movie queen, who is used to getting her way. She has had several affairs and is also often troubled by mental lapses. The dress was a snip from the charity shop and is more rib-crushing than figure-skimming, but, still, I feel glam. Pleased, if a little flushed of face and sweaty of armpit, I trot to the mirror, give myself a self-assured little Cameron Diaz hair-flick, and then freeze. “OhMiGod!” The dog freezes. Cringing, I turn around and crane my neck to get a rear-view of my new hairdo. That’s not a trim! It’s a badly shorn coconut.
“Oh, no, no, nooo!” I grab up the hand mirror and blink forlornly at the microdot on top of my neck, which is my head. I told Gavin I didn’t want to lose the length. Long layers, I said. Grrrr. I blame his love life. Gavin’s partner plays away from home, so top-stylist Gavin (whose bank balance is now considerably enhanced by mine) takes his frustration out on my poor, unsuspecting bonce. No wonder he flashed the mirror behind me at an impossible-to-see angle. God!
Fuming, I swish past Sadie, who’s dithering on the landing in a should I go or should I stay kind of way. Once in the bathroom, I apply a liberal dollop of putty, with which my son arranges his locks into sexily messy, and muss madly, which might be my only hope.
Wrong. Is hopeless. I look like an upturned toilet brush. My shoulders slump. The doorbell rings. Perfect. I ignore it. Determined not to answer, I stay discreetly hidden in the bathroom as it rings for a second time, and then… “Ooh, heck.” …my eyes ping wide. A distinct thumpity, thump followed by a clunk on the stairs signals Sadie has decided to go.
“Hell!” Clutching up my fan-tail, I dash from my hidey-hole, to see Sadie balancing precariously mid-stairs. Her bottom is perched on one step, her one front paw on the stair below, and she is most definitely wobbly. “Stay, Sade,” I instruct, trying to keep my tone less demented than I look. “Mummy’s coming, sweetie.”
Quelling my panic, I tuck my fan-tail in my knickers and barefoot hurriedly down, squeezing carefully past the doe-eyed, trusting dog. One arm under her chest, one under her hindquarters, I heave her up, pause for a pant, then dog-in-arms, pad heavily on down.
Once Sadie is planted safely on all-threes in the hall, I squint through the opaque glass in the front door, to see a man-shaped silhouette squinting back. Typical. Tugging in a breath ~ which, thanks to boned-bodice, stops short of my now rather fulsome breast, I swing the door wide, to find my ex hovering outside. (Demoted to ex after he took me on a luxury boat-cruise… on a narrow-boat… on a canal… and didn’t notice when I fell in). He’s bearing flowers. Hmm? So, do I let him over the threshold, or…?
Oh, no. Staring past him, I see the fanciable one from over the garden fence passing on the opposite side. He has a body! And he’s not wearing a dress. I am. He notices! His eyes rove interestedly over me, boggling startlingly when they reach my safely-tucked in fan-tail. Damn, I did it again.
Sadie’s Tip of the Week:
A fine woman shows her charms to most advantage when she seems most to conceal them. The finest bosom in nature is not so fine as what imagination forms.
John Gregory.
A Year Like No Other by Pauline Lawless
