Throw momma from the train

Back in the slap again, and I can't tell you how good it feels. But I have seen the portrait in an unfinished state - two sides, with and without makeup. I recognise the made-up side but not the other, so far. How can (most) men BEAR not to wear make-up? It just makes you look so much better.

Do you remember the trailer for the television adaptation of Anna Karenina a couple of years ago? Moody picture of her looking out of a window, and a voiceover saying, "This is not the life I meant to have". I went to stay with a friend at the weekend, plus her three daughters. She often says it's odd how each of us has ended up with the life the other one wanted. I can't help thinking she's got the better deal - well, until the point at which I'm not the one who has to get up at 5am with the baby after we've been out till midnight and drunk nearly three bottles of wine. There are compensations.

Little or No Makeup

Today, for reasons too convoluted to go into here, I am having my photo taken as preparation for a portrait. I am ashamed to say that my main response to this is discomfort at being asked to wear “little or no makeup” in preparation. It has made me realise how much I rely on my mask.

It’s not that I’m generally caked in the stuff, you understand. To the man on the Clapham omnibus, it probably looks like I’m wearing eyeliner and mascara, nothing else. But it’s quite startling the difference that it makes to me – I have already been asked three times if I’m ill, and it’s only 10.19am. I often say jokingly that if your mother thinks you look better with makeup, you definitely look better with makeup – mine does…..

My first thought was “How much can I get away with under the banner of little or no?” That seemed like cheating to me. So I thought I’d just try to do what I needed to not feel too self-conscious.

So the sum total this morning is: stuff that smooths your skin out (Idealist): a little bit of powder: a little bit of skin-coloured eyeshadow (to stop the mascara smudging and giving the game away): two microscopically thin coats of mascara, combed out very thoroughly: a small amount of very sheer lipstick. Which will be eaten off and reapplied several times.

To me, I look like shit. Actually, I look like a plain, frowny, middle-aged woman whose skin, let’s face it, is a lot more blotchy and tired than I care to admit. Considering that I feel enormously flattered to be asked to be painted, this isn’t a good start. And I’m not sure it even qualifies as little or no.

Vote For Anyone

I do hope everyone is out voting. Even if I don't agree with them. I live in the safest Conservative seat in the country (I think), and tacticalvoter.net spurned my advances on that basis. But I still think it's important to vote, though I wish there were a "None of the above" box, and if more than half the votes cast in any constituency were for that, there'd have to be a rerun.

I'm horrified and worried by the Conservative rhetoric on immigration and asylum, and their appeal to naked self-interest over any form of social responsibility. I don't like Labour's authoritarian complacency and intellectual laziness. I think the LibDem's plans for spending make them unelectable. (But I still voted for them)

I read in a newspaper article recently that everyone is taking it as read that Labour will get another term, but that nobody would admit to voting for them. The way it seems to be going at the moment is that admitting to voting LibDem is the only "respectable" choice. Weirder and weirder.

I very much hope that after tomorrow I will be able to go back to thinking about lipstick.