A Meeting of Women.

Half an hour before my appointment at Hoopers, Woodseats premier ladies hairdressing salon, I get a phone call from Mothermouse, already seated in said establishment, for a ham and mustard sandwich. I arrive with plate and quartered sandwich to much cooing admiration and marriage proposals. I bask in the attention and kick myself for not realising much earlier in life that delivering a ham and mustard sandwich to a ladies hairdresser would offer such bounty. This is rudely cut short by an ex member of staff arriving with her new baby. A sandwich cannot compete with a baby and I’m left looking at myself in the large ageing mirror whilst everyone plays pass the parcel with the bundle of joy. I attempt to be not bitter and smile weakly at the offspring. I enjoy my monthly visits to this haven of femininity as an Inuit might holiday in the Maldives. Zephyrs of warm air placate my normally arduous life with its constant need of heat and meat and feats of mending. It’s life but not as I know it Cap’n. Conversation is on a level of sun cream and bikinis and the planning of good times with only the odd reference to the pain of child berth and its subsequent repercussions. It’s as if condensing boilers had never been invented, or if they have and go wrong there’s always a handy Inuit to mend it. So here I am, a reindeer in Calcutta, shedding my winter coat like there’s no tomorrow. OK Fred’s terse short-back-and-sides may be half the price but you don’t get a foreign holiday thrown in.