petite anglaise

I am thirty three years old, and a mother. The lady in the local boulangerie stopped calling me “Mademoiselle” quite some time ago.

Why is it then that most of the time I feel like I’m only pretending to be a grown up? Putting on a front. Going through the motions of what seems to be expected of someone my age, unsure whether my heart is really in what I’m doing. From the vantage point of childhood, grown ups seemed so different, so complete, so together. The phrase “one day, when you are grown up…” held such tantalising promise.

But here I am, with three decades already behind me, and I’m not quite sure I belong here. Underneath the play acting, there is a girl who often wonders why adulthood doesn’t feel like she thought it would.

I ceased to grow upwards at the ripe old age of eleven, when I watched, in helpless despair, as the other girls in my class at school overtook me. That same year, I became a woman in the childbearing (as a theoretical possibility) sense, prompting my mother’s gift of a rather chaste paperback about love and sex, with a cover photograph of a young man (German porn star moustache) and woman (flicked back Abba fringe) perpetually trapped in the late Seventies, unaware that oral sex existed.

My first physical relationship, at seventeen, was a landmark, but I wouldn’t describe it as a coming of age. I look back fondly at the young girl I was at the time, enthusiastic about the new pastime I had discovered, and fiercely possessive of my boyfriend in the manner of a small child with an exciting new toy.

I took control of my life and finances when I left home for university, aged nineteen, but I wasn’t yet a fully formed person. More a mass of contradictions: obsessed with grades, ferociously competitive, but also a thrill seeker who spared little thought for her own personal safety. It was a time for exploration, for defining my own boundaries away from the constraints of the parental home.

Somewhere in my twenties, I think I started to grow into my own personality. There was the slow, painful realisation of the fact that being top of the class at school does not automatically equip a person for a brilliant future, if that person has no particular ambition in life. Dreams were diluted with a dose of pragmatism; sacrifices were made in order to remain in the country I decided to call my home.

In my first “proper” job, once the elation at finally having money had abated, and I tired of spending every single Saturday afternoon on a spending spree, “adult” concerns started to insinuate themselves into my brain. Peers were buying flats and houses. Suddenly, amassing savings and acquiring property became a major obsession. Panic: was I missing the boat? Saturdays were a whirlwind of estate agent’s, apartment visits and mounting frustration.

Friends began to marry. I wondered whether that was something I wanted, or felt I should want. Practical reasons aside, I found myself incapable of answering this question. Somewhere along the line, I seemed to have mislaid my romantic, girlish fantasy involving a princess dress, possibly because circumstances dictated that I would be footing the bill. Mr Frog and I had moved in together out of sheer pragmatism, not as a result of some conscious decision to take things to another, more serious level.

We dithered, disagreed, and never made it as far as marriage, but the decision to try for a baby was a conscious one, not taken lightly, even though we could not help, once more, but be influenced by our circle of friends, many of whom were embarking on the same adventure at that time.

I suppose I thought that as an adult I would feel more certainty. Know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I wanted certain things out of life. Not just allow myself to be swept along like driftwood, falling into step with everyone else, mixing my metaphors, unsure of my destination.

After all the changes that 2005 wrought on my life (and Tadpole’s, and Mr Frog’s), I have clearer plans for the future than ever before. I dream of moving to the country with my Lover, renovating a house, learning to drive again. The possibility of having another child. I’m almost certain that these are the things my heart desires. But sometimes I am still haunted by the feeling that I am just a child pretending to be a grown up, yearning to play in a Wendy house, with new toys, a new doll.

Cooking lunch for my Lover on Boxing Day, I couldn’t chase away a mental image of my daughter playing with her toy cooker, with its (pink) plastic pans. Watching myself at play, pretending to cook dinner like a grown up; like my own mother.

Does being a grown up just mean playing an extended game of mummies and daddies, with bigger toys, and real genitalia?

A Tadpole is for life, not just for Christmas.

As we left the office to take the métro to the Marais location of our annual office Christmas lunch, the bombshell was dropped that some, if not all, staff would be expected to return to the office afterwards. Yours truly numbered among the unfortunate few, as the boss had some work he needed to finish off and made it clear that my services would be required. Inwardly fuming, I resolved to ensure that sufficient alcohol was consumed to render my presence entirely futile. It being lunchtime, the quantities required need not be vast.

First up, a champagne apéro had been laid on, to encourage us to mingle with the guests from our London office. The serveur on duty filled our glasses and then busied himself cruising around the vaulted rooms of the wine cellar where the festivities were being held, bearing a tray of appetisers. My glass soon empty, I waited five minutes before discreetly catching his eye and enquiring whether the remaining bottles of champagne in the cooler were “for decorative purposes only”. My comment was greeted with a raised eyebrow, but did ultimately have the desired effect: corks were duly popped, and for the duration of the apéro I was gratified to see that my glass was filled twice as often as everyone else’s.

Swaying slightly, I was well on the way to achieving my goal, and we hadn’t yet moved to take our seats at the Christmas cracker strewn tables. In accordance with long standing company tradition, the senior partner’s wife provides luxury crackers each year for our Christmas “do”. This year’s vintage looked particularly elegant, tied with irridescent ribbons, and, upon closer inspection, with promisingly weighty contents.

Unfortunately, throughout our meal of cream of chestnut soup with a garnish of sot-l’y-laisse (which I’m reliably informed is the part of a chicken known as the “oyster”, the best bit, hence you would be a fool to leave it) and duck leg stuffed with cèpe mushrooms, the waiters served only one glass of wine with each course, taking the bottle away with them each time. After an auspicious start, I was now beginning to feel worryingly sober.

Suddenly there was a volley of popping noises from the neighbouring table, headed up by my boss, as crackers were pulled. A shocked silence instantly fell over the rest of the room, and I put my hand to my mouth in horror.

It is an unwritten rule in our office that crackers may not be pulled until the senior partner and his wife have given us all the cue, by pulling theirs. My boss, not a great fan of tradition, had just committed an unforgiveable faux pas, probably on purpose.

I swivelled around in my chair to monitor the reaction of the senior partner, whose face was, predictably, stormy. Not a word of rebuke was uttered, but the tension in the air was palpable.

In an attempt to diffuse the frosty atmosphere, our IT technician went to put on the party CD which he had created, made up of tracks requested by various members of staff. But even with Bruce Hornsby and the Range coming to our rescue, it was touch and go as to whether our good spirits could be restored.

And one had to wonder whether the French secretary who chose Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” was aware that the lyrics constitute a hymn to fellatio?

At 5pm, feeling replete, sleepy and just a little tipsy, I staggered back to the office, while my colleagues headed for a local bar.

Naturally, I was called upon to do no work whatsoever.

Last night, preparing my third batch of mince pies this month for yet another gathering involving mulled wine (mulled by someone else this time, thankfully, as I found my own attempt at the weekend was a little too dominated by the pungent taste of cloves), I had an out of body experience.

From my vantage point on the kitchen ceiling, I looked down in some consternation at the spectacle of a blonde thirtysomething year old (whose dark roots could bear a little retouche, incidentally, as seen from this particular angle) gently tapping icing sugar through a sieve with a teaspoon, onto a mince pie which was partially covered with a cardboard cut out of a star, with a smaller star inside it. The results (see photo) were undeniably very fetching, but I had to wonder whether this lady shouldn’t be devoting her energies to some other, more rewarding activity than drawing stars on pieces of card and cutting around them with nail scissors.

The domestic goddess thing (if one can qualify for goddesshood when the pastry is bought ready rolled, the mincemeat out of a jar, and one is not wearing an apron) may have gone just a little too far.

As I snapped back into my body again, with an elastic band like twang, I hastily grabbed a beer from the fridge and wiped my shaking, floury hands on my jeans, in an attempt to sully the tableau of myself as Pastry Goddess.

I did however keep the cardboard cut out. It might be needed again on Christmas day. You never know.

*****

Later still, I reluctantly prepared to do some ironing. At the best of times, this is a task which tends to be deferred until not one pair of work trousers remains and it absolutely cannot be avoided. On this occasion, to add insult to injury, the (mostly black) garments which awaited their turn had accidentally been washed with a pink jumper of Tadpole’s (with a delightful cat motif, courtesy of belle maman), and were all, without exception, covered in a fine dusting of pink fluffy lint.

This was a job for the “sticky toilet roll on a stick” device, if ever there was one. I have no idea what this contraption is known as, either in French or in English, and, in case you were planning to take it upon yourself to enlighten me, I would prefer not to know, as there are some things in life that should remain a mystery.

But the sad fact of the matter is that it was only yesterday that it came to me in a sudden and unexpected flash of enlightenment that there are actually SEVERAL LAYERS of sticky stuff on the (loo)roll.

Who knew?

There was me thinking that the “sticky toilet roll on a stick” was the most wasteful invention in the Western world, because after cleaning the lint off a single T-shirt it had to be consigned to the bin and a new one (or a toilet roll refill) purchased. How misguided was I? How could I have been blind to the existence of the several layers of untouched, virginal, supremely adhesive roll which lie beneath?

So, in case any other poor souls are labouring under the illusion that sticky toilet rolls on a stick are single use products, I decided to share my (latest) epiphany with the internet.

Please tell me I was not alone in thinking this?

Monoprix: where customer service comes to die.

Unfortunately, as Monop’ (as it is not so fondly known) is the only supermarket located within striking distance of my office, it is a place I must reluctantly visit to buy supplies of Covent Garden soup. The other lunch options in the vicinity of my office are so fiendishly expensive (€ 10 for a sandwich and dessert, anyone?) that I have little choice in the matter. And so it is that with a heavy heart, I find myself once again in the Monop’ foodhall, searching for an oh so elusive shopping basket.

Five minutes later, laden with cartons of spicy Thai chicken soup and garlic naan bread (when the lover’s away…) I take up a queuing position. Not in just any queue, mind. Over time I have acquired an intimate knowledge of the relative merits of the motley crew that are the Monop’ cashiers. There are those who are painfully slow. Those who are efficient, but have a habit of chatting to local pensioners at great length. Those whose French is unintelligible. All, without exception, look thoroughly miserable. The pay must be terrible, and I doubt I’d be able to muster a smile if I were in their shoes, but, even so, my sympathy has its limits.

I opt for a young, but oddly toothless, cashier. My turn finally comes around, and I unload my week’s lunches onto the conveyor belt. Prompted for my carte de fidelité I proffer it, wearily. I have tens of thousands of points, but have yet to qualify for so much as a free cinema ticket. Unlike in England, where my parents jetted off for an all expenses paid week in the Channel Islands courtesy of their Tesco Clubcard, loyalty is not a quality for which you are handsomely rewarded in this country. Quite the opposite. My S’Miles card’s only function is to serve as a painful reminder of the fact that to amass that number of points, I must have spent an awful lot of euros in this godforsaken place.

Next, I insert my bank card into the chip and pin reader. It beeps in an ominous way, and I sigh inwardly.

“CARTE MUETTE,” reads the screen.

The checkout lady takes out the card, and rubs it on her grubby uniform, before shoving it unceremoniously back in the card reader.

“CARTE MUETTE,” repeats the screen, unimpressed with her polishing abilities.

In the interests of clarity, the checkout girl states, in a monotone voice: “votre puce est muette, Madame.”

This could mean one of two things:

1. My flea is a deaf-mute; or
2. The chip in my card is not working.

Out of the corner of my eye, I am aware of fidgeting in the ranks of shoppers queueing behind me. It is only a matter of time before the low, discontented muttering starts.

“That’s odd. It worked just fine in the bookshop down the road two minutes ago,” I venture, trying to maintain my composure.

“Well it isn’t working now.” comes the helpful reply.

Rifling through my bag, I sigh inwardly as I note the absence of my chequebook or sufficient cash to pay for my purchases. Dentally challenged checkout girl rolls her eyes and suggests I go and withdraw money from the cash machine on the ground floor of the shop.

I start to feel more than a little flustered. And cross. I am convinced, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it is her card reader which is malfunctioning, not my card. We are surrounded by tills and card machines, but rather than offering to try a different machine, the onus is on me to go on a cash withdrawal mission. It’s ludicrous.

Leaving my half-packed shopping bags behind, I stomp resentfully upstairs to where the cash machine is located. It’s not working. A presentation rack of cheap, no-brand Christmas chocolates has been placed in front of it; the screen is blank. The nearest hole in the wall is 100 m down the road.

I wanted my Thai soup. And my naan bread. But not that much.

Time for a € 10 sandwich from Lina’s.

I lurch around the apartment impatiently, attempting to locate Tadpole’s striped woolly hat, one arm inside a coatsleeve, the other engaged in hastily ramming a piece of buttered toast into my mouth. The hat, a present from Tadpole’s aunt, is nowhere to be found.

“Do you remember where you put your noddy hat?” I enquire, in desperation. Just occasionally this tactic does work, and Tadpole will reply “in my bedroom” in a tone which somehow manages to convey both incredulity (at the fact I have managed to overlook something so patently obvious) and a world weary tone of resignation (can mummy really be that dim?) Not so this time. She looks at me blankly, then turns back to her jigsaw.

I try to picture the previous day’s homecoming, rewinding the images in my head until I arrive at the relevant chapter. Come to think of it, I distinctly remember standing in front of the lift holding two bags and a Christmas tree, yelling “No, I can’t hold your hat. If you want to take it off, you hold it! Mummy has all these things to carry already!”

And now it’s missing. So clearly it was dropped on the entrance hall floor in a fit of Tadpole pique, left inside the lift, or abandoned on the carpeted landing outside our front door. Which means that either some well-meaning soul has found it and stuffed it in our letterbox, or someone a little less charitable has thrown it in the communal dustbin. Being a pessimist by nature, I assume it has gone for good and act accordingly.

An alternative hat is sourced, which is was once white, and has built in ear flaps and a strip which fastens under the chin with velcro. Now rather a tight fit, it was Tadpole’s preferred garment of winter 2004.

I decide to use this opportunity to teach Tadpole Something Important. Even if the article I read on toddler taming yesterday did say that there is little or no point in chastising children of that age about events which happened more than ten minutes ago.

Adopting my most earnest tone, I begin my lecture. “Mummy doesn’t have your noddy hat any more, because you dropped it outside when we came home yesterday. You’ll have to wear this one instead. It’s a pity, because that hat was lovely, and it was a present from Auntie S.”

My daughter eyes me gravely and nods her head. “Yes, I did drop it mummy. Is gone now.” Disturbingly, however, she shows not a shred of remorse.

“Mummy’s a bit sad,” I continue, labouring my point in the hope of getting some sort of emotional response, “because mummy asked you to carry it and you were naughty. You left it on the floor.”

Tadpole nods again, unperturbed.

Taking the ersatz-hat from my hands, my daughter says calmly “never mind mummy. I wear this one. This one very nice.” She puts it on her head and giggles as I move to fasten the velcro under her chin. “Look mummy, the hat has a beard, just like Father Christmas!”

A smile twitches at the corner of my mouth, threatening to take over, but I manage to quell it and soldier on, regardless. “It’s still a shame about that stripey hat. Mummy liked the stripey hat.”

I am starting to sound like a broken record. As repetitive as a toddler.

“Not be sad mummy. It doesn’t matter. We can buy another one, in the shop,” Tadpole explains, patiently.

If I had a white flag, I’d be waving it right about now.

We take the lift down to the ground floor, where we are greeted by the sight of a striped hat, which someone has thoughfully stowed above the battery of letterboxes.

Saying nothing, I stuff it into my letterbox when Tadpole isn’t looking, and we set off for the childminder’s.

When we were about halfway home, pushing the Christmas tree in front of us in Tadpole’s Maclaren buggy, I realised that the girl at the florist’s hadn’t actually given me the type I’d asked for. Mine had fat, luxurious, bottle brush type foliage, whereas this one, admittedly partially hidden by a net body stocking, was thin and sparse looking. Yet again, my attention had been diverted by a toddler at a crucial juncture in the transaction. Shopkeepers must see me and Tadpole coming and rub their hands together in gleeful anticipation. There is more than one way to shortchange a distracted mother.

I sighed, genuinely disappointed, but it was too late now, we had already covered 500 m at a snail’s Tadpole’s pace, and it was too late, too cold and too dark to contemplate retracing our steps and argue about branch girth and foliage in French.

Once we had got ourselves and our needle-shedding friend up to the fifth floor apartment we call home, I clambered up the stepladder to retrieve the decorations from their lofty place of hibernation. Luckily they were still there, intact, aside from the fairy lights, of which, predictably, only half still worked. I have not so fond memories of that fateful Christmas when the bag of decorations could not be found, no matter where Mr Frog and I hunted. I had to concede, bashfully, that the bag must have been an accidental casualty of my passion for “decluttering”. Not a mistake you would want to make more than once. Christmas decorations are supposed to be amassed over a long period of time, not purchased all at once for a price equivalent to the GDP of a third world country.

The tree positioned on the wicker chest I use for the storage of spirits (of the alcoholic variety), after careful removal of a few choice bottles which I suspect I will be needing in the interim, I opened up the decoration bag and showed Tadpole the glittering bounty within.

I had imagined this scene in my head, ever since Tadpole’s first breathless exclamation of appreciation as we passed the mairie with its curtain of white lights and mammoth twin sapins. Tadpole and mummy, bathed in the soft light of a non-malfunctioning garland of Habitat lights, in fuzzy soft focus, with a soundtrack of carol singers warbling on the stereo. A candidate for Tadpole’s First Memory, perhaps?

What my shiny, feel good fantasy hadn’t quite accounted for were the hazards of the safety pins and bent paperclips I use to hang the various baubles and stars up. Nor had I actually thought through the implications of Tadpole using eggshell thin baubles as juggling balls, or squeezing them tightly in her little palms.

My best laid plans flew swiftly out of the window, as I shrieked anxiously “No! Not like that, careful!” and “Don’t touch that! It’s really sharp! You’ll get a bobo!”

Upon which Tadpole rapidly lost interest in the whole enterprise and started colouring her teletubbies’ magazine instead, tongue protruding in concentration.

I have to say that as I decorated the tree, alone, I wasn’t exactly assailed by a feeling of déjà vu.

I am walking along a long corridor with my daddy, who is very tall, like a giant. The corridor stretches as far as I can see in both directions. Everyone who catches sight of me, whether it be a nurse, another visitor or a patient, smiles or points, and I giggle with delight. I like being the centre of everyone’s attention.

We are going to visit mummy and my new baby sister, who has red hair and a very blotchy face, in the maternity ward. I am two years and ten months old, and when I got dressed today I insisted on wearing my nurse’s uniform.

*****

I am lying in my bed in the dark wondering what to do. I have a proper bed, because I’m a big girl, but my sister still sleeps in a cot. Wilfred, my teddy, is propped up in his usual place, covering the end of the radiator which looks like a scary face. I have just woken from a very nasty dream about the monster who hides in the shadowy place behind the sofa in the living room, and I would like nothing more than to run into mummy and daddy’s bedroom for a cuddle.

The problem is that the man who lives at the foot of the bed, who sometimes tickles my feet in the night, might grab me if I do.

I deliberate, for what seems like hours, but is probably only a matter of seconds, then shoot out of the bottom left hand corner of the bed, just out of his reach, and lunge out onto the brightly lit landing.

*****

It is the Queen’s birthday, which is called a “Jubilee”. I am wearing my very best dress, which is German and called a “dirndl”. My auntie lives in Germany, and she bought a blue dirndl for me and a green one for my sister.

There is a party in someone’s garden for the Jubilee, and all the people from Admiral’s Court, the cul de sac where we live, are there. We have wheelbarrow races, and I eat lots of cake and ice cream and jelly.

When it is bedtime, a nice girl comes to babysit so that mummy and daddy can go back to the party without us. I have a tummy ache, and suddenly realise that I am going to be sick, but I can’t tell the babysitter because I daren’t open my mouth. I point to my mouth with one hand, covering it with the other, and she somehow understands and motions me into the bathroom. I go to the sink, like mummy showed me, but the babysitter says “no!” and makes me do it in the toilet.

It tastes really, really horrible, but once all the jelly has come back out, I feel much better.

*****

These are the earliest memories I can recall from my childhood. I’m as sure as I can be that these are memories, as opposed to stories recounted by adults within my earshot so many times that I have fashioned mental images to accompany them. Although I still maintain to this day that I must have been with my mother when my baby sister was stung by a wasp as she laid in her big, old-fashioned pram, so vivid are the pictures and soundtrack I carry in my head. But I wasn’t actually there, I was at school, according to my mother.

Sometimes I wonder what Tadpole’s first memory will be. Hanging decorations together on our Christmas tree? Singing songs with mummy in the bathroom, enjoying the echo of our voices? Dissolving in fits of giggles when she does that funny voice for “The Gruffalo”? Gasping at the twinkling lights of Paris by night from daddy’s living room window?

I look forward to the day, many years from now, when my daughter will tell me.

I suppose I hoped that the act of leaving Mr Frog would magically transform me into a different, more positive person. There would be no more black cloud days. I would shed my skin, and start afresh.

When I first met Lover, caught up in that heady seratonin rush of excitement and boundless optimism, everything seemed not only possible, but blindingly simple. A bright new future was mapped out as far as my imagination could reach. I saw a wedding. Another child. A renovated ruin in the Breton countryside. A new life, far from the stresses of the capital city, a dream I’ve harboured ever since I became a mother. A chocolate box village school for Tadpole, so much more appealing than the austere maternelle on the avenue Simon Bolivar with its forbidding, barred windows and the sinister plaque which never fails to send a shiver down my spine, recounting how many of their Jewish pupils were deported during the Second World War. Lest we forget.

Everything seemed like childsplay when we hatched our plans under summer skies, walking hand in hand through the Thabor park.

A few months down the line, try as I might, I can’t ignore a growing, gnawing anxiety, a vague sensation of malaise. Is this my natural state of being? As the well-worn cliché goes, you can run, but try as you might, you cannot escape from yourself.

The hairline crack in our plans, I see with the benefit of hindsight, was the timing. I was adamant that I must wait a year or more, for Tadpole and Mr Frog’s sake, before I made any move. Time enough for us all to adjust to the new status quo. Time for wounds to begin to heal. Continuity for Tadpole, who would live in the same flat and spend her days with the same nanny until she was of an age to start school.

Time for the initial euphoria at the newness of our relationship to abate, so Lover and I could look calmly at our plans in the cold light of day and be sure that we were doing the right thing.

So here I now wait, in a limbo of my own making, increasingly aware of a creeping, subtle fear lapping like cool water around my ankles, rising slowly, inexorably up my calves towards my knees.

I lie, half submerged in my bath, eyes defensively closed, and panic. How will I adapt to a new life in the provinces, away from the city which has been my home for ten years? Will I be able to carve out a little niche for myself in rural Brittany? Will a Rennes employer have any use for a high flying bilingual city secretary? If not, what then? How long can I afford to spend looking for a job, before the funds run out? Will we really have enough to live on; to renovate a crumbling barn or farmhouse? Will Tadpole be happy?

What gnaws away at me most persistently is the knowledge of the separation I will inflict on Tadpole and her father. No more mid-week nights spent at daddy’s house. Instead, alternate Friday evenings spent in a TGV train, ferrying Tadpole to Paris, then catching a train straight back again. The same, in reverse, for Mr Frog on Sunday evenings. While I can’t conceive of staying in this city indefinitely against my wishes, purely to give Tadpole and Mr Frog the gift of proximity, I feel criminally selfish for planning to separate them in this way.

I know that I still want all those things my Lover and I talked about last summer. Desperately. Inevitably though, in this limbo of waiting, the hard realities of what I am contemplating are starting to hit home; naïve optimism is giving way to trepidation.

Seven or eight more months remain. I bury my head into the crook of Lover’s neck and close my eyes, breathe deeply. He knows me. He knows that worrying is one of the things I do best.

But I think he is puzzled, and hurt by the fact he is powerless to banish the clouds completely.

A kind reader has nominated petite anglaise as Best European Blog in the Wizzbang Weblog Awards for 2005. I must admit I can’t really keep a handle on what these different awards are/mean, but if you are at a loose end and feel like voting (apparently you can do this every 24 hours, bizarrely), then kindly step this way:

The afternoon stretches interminably ahead of me, twice as long as usual, a piece of elastic pulled taut. I gaze blankly out of the window, barely registering the mass of pale grey clouds rushing past. There is a vague ache in my temples, and for some reason my fingers are stiff and painful when I type.

A flashback to a kitchen in Vincennes this morning, around 1 am. I am tackling a mountain of washing up with with a surprising amount of (admittedly alcohol-fuelled) enthusiasm. My friend has nipped across the road (wearing a green paper crown from a Christmas cracker) to heat up a Christmas pudding in her neighbour’s microwave. The other guests are watching an Alan Partridge Christmas DVD.

It doesn’t get much more festive than this.

The only thing which puzzles me slightly about the snapshot still I can see in my mind’s eye is that I seem to be wearing a gauzy turquoise pair of skirtpants on my head.

Skirtpants: item of seriously negligent underwear consisting of a virtually non-existent g-string attached to a transparent mini-skirt, with dangly ribbony bits at the sides. Falls into the category of underwear which is not actually intended to be worn under anything. Nor for very long, if all goes according to plan.

Unless, of course you are wearing them on your head, whilst fully clothed, and washing up, and they are not even your skirtpants in the first place.

I can’t quite recollect how they got there. But I do vaguely recollect the glare of a flashbulb or two.

Oh dear.