Being pale is not a crime!

WHAT is this obsession with getting the perfect tan? I don’t mean by roasting yourself in actual sunlight. Let’s face it, chances are that the long-term sun worshipper risks the permanent appearance of a wrinkled prune, never mind the well-documented health risks.
No, I’m talking about that WAG favourite: the fake tan.
Come on, admit it. If you’re a girl of Northern European complexion, you’ve probably been slathering it on by the bucket load. Now I’m beginning to think I may be the only pale woman left in Britain.
You see, this year I decided to go “au natural”. Not, you understand, that I’m in any way opposed to artifice. I rarely leave the house without a decent coat of make-up and my hair long since lost its colour virginity.
But, while I might, from time to time, assume the mane of a blonde or redhead, I’ve become bored by the weekly ritual of streaky ankles, orange fingertips and the constant aroma of digestive biscuits.
OK, I’ve never been what you’d call a natural beach bunny. At the first sign of sunlight I encase myself in layers of clothing and SPF50. But this year I’m content to be what I am: fair and freckly.
Yet this seems to bother other people. Just try being truly pale and buying make-up. Assuming you can find a colour that matches your ivory tones, you still can’t go to a beauty counter without the saleswoman setting about “warming you up” with her latest bronzer.
Why do I need to be golden to be happy? I’m not sad, I’m not sick. I’m just pale.
You might be wondering why my photograph shows me with a decidedly golden glow. Let’s just say that without the intervention of Photoshop, all you’d see would be a mop of hair and a pair of eyes.
Last year, The Year Without Summer, I’d gradually allowed my fake tan routine to slide. There’d been no sunshine, so absolutely no-one had acquired a natural tan. Everyone knew that all those golden girls were faking it; it didn’t seem necessary to go through all that rigmarole.
Until, that was, a young man promoting a new beauty salon stopped me in the middle of Derby. I say stopped, it was more like grabbed, but anyway, he kindly informed me that I looked “in need of a makeover” and invited me to visit the establishment.
Perhaps I’m being harsh on the lad. Perhaps he was showing refreshing honesty rather than relying on outrageous, if predictable, flattery. But it struck me that he might be a more successful salesman if he avoided insulting potential clients.
Could I possibly look that bad? I called on my so-called friend for moral support. She said I looked “a bit peaky” which is code for: “To be honest, you look so pale I want to bring you smelling salts.”
I protested: “But I’m not ill. This is what I look like. All the time. Underneath all that blusher – this is me.”
She looked confused and then her faux-glowed nose crinkled up in sympathy. It wasn’t the reaction I’d hoped for, but it was the moment I decided to stop pretending. To embrace my natural pallor and play the pseudo-sun-kissed game no more. To just be me: pale – and content.
And I’m not the only one rebelling: there’s even a Facebook group for those who refuse to conceal their alabaster skin. It’s not because we don’t care, or because we’re ill, or even that we’re being brave. It’s just that we’re, well, comfortable in our own skin.

No Henman - no summer?

WHAT are we going to do without Tim Henman? As if having no England football team to support wasn’t bad enough, we now have the prospect of a fortnight of Wimbledon without Tiger Tim to cheer on/ anguish over.
Since our favourite tennis ace announced his retirement last year I’ve been wondering what on earth I was going to worry about all summer long. No more can I indulge in my annual ritual of initial optimism and excitement, followed by anxiety and eventual disappointment.
At least, I thought, there’ll be Euro 2008 to watch. That’s sure to end in a dramatic penalty shoot-out exit for the English at least. What more could we want? Of course, thanks to a dispassionate qualifying campaign, our brave boys were all sitting on the beach somewhere, while I tried to find solace in supporting Sweden and Spain
It’s not been a good year for us Brits. Eurovision was a disaster. It’s not a sport, but it’s scarcely a song contest either. And if we ever needed a reminder of just how few friends our country has, then Eurovision is it.
Not that we mind being up against it. We’re very comfortable with battling the odds, punching above our weight, and all the other clichés we love to cling to. It’s our thing. It’s what we do best and without someone to get behind, the Brits are lost.
We need someone to drive us to distraction and worry us silly. Especially those of us who follow the fortunes, or rather misfortunes, of Derby County. Let’s be honest, all the worrying, even the tension. was over by Christmas. After that, it was more of an endurance test as our beloved Rams tested the theory of “just how bad can it get?”
Soon, we’ll have the Olympics, of course, and doubtless we’ll find ourselves temporary experts of Greco-Roman wrestling if one of our own starts to do well. Remember how, for five days, we all loved curling?
But back to the tennis, where we do at least have Andy Murray. But then he seems a young man remarkably reluctant in his Britishness. Fair enough, if he prefers to be Scottish alone then that’s OK. I still consider Scotland part of the UK, and I do have Scottish blood.
But there’s something else that prevents me from wholeheartedly throwing my enthusiasm behind him. From his acquired mid-Atlantic drawl, to his hangdog body language, there’s something decidedly discomforting about him.
Something tells me that Mr Murray is not exactly enamoured with the sport at which he excels. It’s difficult to get behind someone, to live and die with every serve, volley and smash, when you’re not quite sure they care themselves.
We Brits like our sporting heroes to have old-fashioned gumption, to hold on to the very last, to fight, to work, to show that good-old bulldog spirit, whether they win or not. We want them to draw every last breath out of us, to tie our guts up in knots and make us gnaw on our nails. Somehow Murray has so far fallen short.
Perhaps I’ll have to rely on the world of motor sport. F1’s young Lewis Hamilton is a wonderful prospect - talented, successful, dashing, happy to be British. And, if recent weeks are anything to go by, he’s possessed of that essential trait of all true British sporting heroes: the ability to shoot himself in the foot from time to time.
Well, if there were no chance of him messing it up, it just wouldn’t be fun, now would it?

A degree of uncertainty?

Is someone trying to tell me something? In the last week I’ve received no fewer than four e-mails from educational establishments offering the “degree you’ve always deserved”. How do they know I deserve one? Or, for that matter, that I don’t already have one?
As it happens I was one of only four of our 40-strong sixth form not to opt for uni. I’d had enough of lectures and essays and attempting to cram 200 years of British and European history for a three-hour exam. Subsequently, I’ve gone through life degree-free and perfectly happy.
Until, that is, all these e-mails arrived. When four different universities declare you have “unfulfilled potential”, and offer courses especially tailored to the “requirements of the mature working person”, you just have to take a closer look.
But what course might I choose? I got a decent pass at A-level geography, and so began there. Now, come on don’t laugh, there’s much more to it than pointing out Dar es Salaam on a map. As it happened the universities were similarly unimpressed: not one offered any such degree.
The point I’d missed, of course, was that what these universities have in common – aside from having no campuses other than a computer server (that alone should probably have alerted me) – is that they offer “Life Experience” degrees based on the knowledge you already have.
I began to consider my own great bank of accumulated knowledge.
What kind of degree could I get? The history of Star Trek? Shopping telly? The long-term psychological effects of supporting Derby County? Unfortunately, none of these options were on offer, so I turned to the find-your-degree guide.
It turned out that five years of Sunday School entitled me to a bachelor’s in Bible studies. And successfully balancing my cheque book for the last 20 years should see me all right for a doctorate in economics. OK, it took me two attempts to pass my O-level, but I’ve never failed a maths test since.
But I was a little concerned by the reassurance that I had “worked for this degree no less than someone who sat in a classroom”. I mean, there wasn’t even an examination to pass. These degrees were intended for someone in search of an ego boost. Someone who felt they deserved recognition.
And recognition, of course, comes at a price. Although the precise cost was not readily displayed on any of the websites.
I wondered, then, other than providing that ego massage, what use a phoney degree might be. Despite assurances that I could include it on my CV, business card, passport or any other official document I fill out, surely doing so might well prove fraudulent?
Indeed, a quick internet surf revealed a story about several New York City fire fighters who were arrested for purchasing bogus diplomas in order to earn promotions; and another report that several on-line universities were shut down some years ago when it was discovered that hundreds of unqualified people in the US and UK had used their fake qualifications to get jobs as computer experts and, even more worryingly, as teachers.
With fake degrees available to anyone with access to the internet and a credit card, where could it end? With people walking around giving out medical advice based only on ten years of watching Casualty? The mind surely boggles.
Personally I think my ego’s content to go on acquiring the random bits of trivia that occupy my brain and not worry about a degree. It seems to have worked so far. It’s what they used to call the University of Life.

It's an age thing.

HERE’S a cautionary tale. When we were at school, some 20 years ago, someone of my acquaintance was two years older than me. Since achieving professional renown, he now claims to be two years my junior. Any one of more than 200 people from his year could expose him as a forty-something and yet he persists.
So why do people lie about their age? I used to lie about mine. But I was 16 and trying to get served in a pub.

Nowadays, of course, I’d like to claim to be younger, but it’s fraught with problems. Lie too much and you run the risk of looking haggard for your “age”. And if you run into someone with whom you went to school, well the game’s quickly over.Age, of course, is one of the few things we can do nothing to change. No amount of skin creams, or Botox, or exercise will make me any younger. They might make me feel or look more youthful. But the fact is, I’m 39 and I’m only going to get older.
But is it any wonder we’re tempted to lie about our age? Age has become the ultimate label with which we identify and divide people; it’s hardly surprising we are so keen to conceal it.

Yet when we were children we scraped every last fraction into our age. We were four and a half, eight and three-quarters, and nearly ten. Adulthood changes this. A few months ago, a visitor to the house asked me how old I was. Before I knew it, I found myself blurting out the answer. At first I was annoyed that I’d answered so readily and then annoyed at the impertinence of the question. But why are we so insulted? If we think we look younger than we are, we are more than happy to encourage that kind of enquiry. Shouldn’t we just take the rough with the smooth?

When I was about to turn 30, I spent half the year imagining it was the end of something. The death of youth, I suppose. Of course, come my 30th birthday, I felt exactly the same as I did the day before, only without the illogical sense of panic.
Victor Hugo noted that 40 is the old age of youth while 50 is the youth of old age – I’ll have to let you know on that – but in the meantime I’ve decided to celebrate each birthday that, God-willing, passes by and not fear them. It's really just a matter of attitude.
We celebrate every birthday up to 21, but then we turn 30, push 40 and hit 50; and it sounds more and more gruelling as the years roll on. Once we reach 80 – there we go again, that's considered a stretch - we stop wishing happy birthdays and begin to congratulate each other. The marks of 90 or 100 are considered increasing achievements, as if living to 100 is something we can all achieve if only we try hard enough.

Now congratulations on wedding anniversaries I can understand, because marriage would seem to be something at which you have to work. But our age? I can’t help suspecting that a lot of this conditioning comes from greetings cards manufacturers; those cards with numbers on always seem to be the most expensive.

But lie as we might, we all have to put up with increasing maturity. But we don’t have to be governed by the numbers on our birthday cards. It’s your life that’s important, not your age.

So let’s just get on with living and stop worrying about birthdays. You never know, we might just start enjoying them again.



ENDS