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

Funny foreign food? Count me in!

YOU had to feel sorry for them, a young American couple in a foreign land, trying to make head or tail of the menu. Actually they were in London last Saturday, in a South Bank fish restaurant. And they weren’t trying to order anything all that complicated – just good old British fish and chips.
It had all begun so well. Granted they might have got a more authentic experience had they opted for the chip shop further down the street, but here they were, doing their best to join in with Londoners and sample the local delicacy.
That was until the waiter asked them whether they’d like some mushy peas. They just stared at him as if he’d begun spouting Ancient Greek. I suppose it doesn’t really sound very encouraging, does it? Mushy … peas? Imagine if you’d never had them, never heard of them even, what that name might conjure up.
Sadly for the unfortunate pair, the waiter wasn’t a native Brit either, and couldn’t really manage to impart the ambrosial delight that is mushy peas. They politely agreed to try one portion between them.
When their meal arrived they examined the bright green goo, poked at it with a spoon before drizzling the tiniest amount on their chips, sampled it gingerly with eyes closed, then decided against further experimentation.
Apparently they weren’t the first visitors to these shores to have similarly baulked. During Euro 96, dozens of Turkish football fans billeted in Nottingham were reportedly flummoxed by the “strange green sauce” that the chip shop had dolloped on their takeaways.
As it happened, Mum and me had the fish and chips too. We were off to the theatre and in traditional mood. The problem was that, while the meal was excellently cooked, plentiful and lovely to look at, those mushy peas lacked a certain something. I think it was tradition. They were elegant, and while I’m not morally opposed to elegant eating, there’s something about mushy peas that is inherently unsophisticated.
These mushies had been expertly crafted from fresh peas and pureed with mint. They were lovely. But just weren’t a patch on the ones they used to serve at the Stanton Street chippy.
There are some things that are delicious and wonderful despite their lack of refinement. I mean you really can’t beat cinema nachos. We all know that real cheese has never been that texture, or that colour, and yet with the promise of the latest blockbuster, there’s simply nothing better.
At least with mushy peas the description is fairly explanatory. Some foods are not at all what they seem, as I found out in a small town neighbourhood restaurant in Colorado, where they were serving something called Rocky Mountain Oysters.
The waitress asked if I’d had them before. I assured her that I’d eaten plenty of oysters and she seemed content. Perhaps her initial hesitation should have stopped me in my tracks.
Anyway, the appetizer arrived. Everyone had a taste and agreed it was really quite scrumptious. Sort of mushroomy actually. So there I am three days later, still congratulating myself on my new discovery, when I overhear a conversation between our tour guide and a fellow passenger, and then I come over all nauseous.
Guess what? Rocky Mountain Oysters have nothing to do with oysters, or even mushrooms. They’re buffalo meat. And they come from the part of a buffalo that, how shall I put this, accommodated part of his manhood. I won’t worry you with the method of acquisition, let’s just say it’s not necessary to kill the buffalo and that further information would make your eyes water.
Now I’m normally quite happy to live on the culinary edge, but although I eat fish and seafood, it’s more than 20 years since I’ve willingly eaten a piece of meat. At the time it wasn’t a moral choice, but now I felt guilty that I’d consumed the most delicate part of a poor buffalo, and, let’s be honest, enjoyed it.
The previous day I’d been introduced to some buffalo that had appeared in the Kevin Costner film Dances With Wolves. Now I couldn’t help but wonder whether they had known that I’d just eaten the crown jewels of one their brothers.
Oddly, when I’ve recounted this cautionary tale, it’s been my more carnivorous friends who’ve been the most appalled. But I’m not surprised; I’ve heard a coach load of holidaymakers in Norway refuse point blank to sample reindeer meat on the grounds that it would be “like eating Rudolf”.
Funny that, because the previous evening they’d happily munched away on a leg of Larry the Lamb. We're talking Shaun the Sheep here, people.
But who am I to judge? And besides, if you can stomach it, I can recommend a very tasty, appetizer.

Men see only ... green

IF George Clooney described your violet blouse as “purple”, would you care? Probably not. But what is it with men and colour?
I may be entering dangerously sexist territory here – but why is it that the average human male can see only around a dozen colours? Where women see emerald, jade and moss, men see only green. While we extol the virtue of our new coral shirt, a bloke will insist that it’s orange.
When we want the dining room chimney-breast painted ochre, they hate the idea of yellow. And I’ve learned that they’re not being awkward; they actually do think that cobalt is … well, just blue.
But why? Little boys were just as exposed to boxes of Crayola Crayons as us girls. Don’t they remember the sheer joy of all those gorgeous colours like magenta, raw umber, sepia and carnation pink?
I admit I was a tad obsessive about my crayons – lining them up in order according to the gradual change from one colour to the next, so blue-violet was next to violet-blue, green-yellow beside yellow-green and so on. But surely men must have learned a bit about colour back then? So where did it all go?
It might just be that precise colour designation is not important to men. If he likes his new sweater, a fella doesn’t care whether it’s charcoal or slate; to him it’s just grey and comfy.
Well, it might not all be their fault. While only a tiny proportion of one per cent of women suffer from a form of colour blindness, as many as eight per cent of the male species are similarly afflicted.
Which admittedly doesn’t explain the remaining 92 per cent, but there might be a legitimate medical answer here too. Some scientists believe that men’s brains may be less efficient at processing and understanding colours. Most women apparently see colours in the red-orange range much better than men – which might account for the female love affair with pink.
Women may have to accept that colour is just not as important to men. So it must be pretty annoying being subjected to that much detail when all you want is a basic description. And let’s be honest: does anyone actually know what “taupe” is?
But it’s not just our appreciation of colour that is so different. Take our approaches to shopping. I’m going to make sweeping generalisations here, so apologies in advance for those exceptions to my rule. For most men, a shopping expedition, when it cannot be avoided, is a matter of military precision: identify, locate, acquire, and retreat. But for women shopping is a more holistic experience. Yes, gentlemen, I know we drive you mad with our browsing and comparing, our coffee breaks and yet more browsing. Especially when we invariably return to the first item we tried in the first shop. It’s a girl thing and for that we’re sorry. But for us, shopping is an emotional issue. In order to buy something, we have to love it. We can’t just make do.
To balance things out, it’s time to admit to some genetic mutations in most of the females of my acquaintance. There is a little known, but highly evolved, area of the female brain that perfectly deducts 10 per cent from the cost of any item of clothing when required to announce it to a member of the opposite sex.
And another that instantly recognises any outfit previously worn by another woman. So you see we aren’t just being greedy when we want another new dress – it’s a genetic necessity.
If all this were not enough, there’s also a language barrier that exists between the sexes. Take that horrible and contentious word “fine”. When a man describes something as fine, he means that it’s perfectly acceptable, that it fits the bill precisely. The frock that looks “fine” is “just right”.
But to a woman, the word is poison. It represents the barely acceptable; it’s part of the “if that’s all you’ve got it’ll will do” range of adjectives. Men, if a woman tells you that your suit is fine, it probably isn’t.
It’s like a man’s reaction to the word “cute”. To women there is nothing disparaging in describing something or someone as cute; quite the opposite actually. But we’ve noticed that it’s not always a concept with which men are comfortable.
We do understand there are language difficulties and we don’t want you to panic when we ask you if we look “OK”. What we want is an honest answer. All right, absolute honesty should probably be reserved for the times you think we look fabulous. But please don’t say we look fine. Of course, if we’ve spent four hours getting ready and still look like a dog’s dinner, then a lie will be – just fine.

The Play's The Thing!

IT was Lord Olivier who said it: “I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theatre is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.” So what does it say about Derby, that we have closed our only professional theatre in a Comedy of Errors, while allowing the virtual destruction of a Sleeping Beauty just down the road?
Because whether you prefer Shakespeare or Charles Perrault, Derby without a theatre is just plain wrong. It’s perfectly ridiculous to suggest that a city of almost a quarter of a million residents – and a potential audience catchment of twice that – cannot support a provincial theatre.
It’s certainly not that there isn’t enough interest; I used to be a regular at Derby Playhouse and the place was always packed. Neither am I convinced that the Westfield Centre is to blame for all Derby’s ills.
I don’t know the answer, but I do know why I eventually abandoned the Playhouse. Not because I didn’t enjoy the entertainment on offer – although there did seem to be a strange obsession with trying to incorporate the revolving stage into almost every production – but because the place was just so darned uncomfortable.
Anyone who ever ventured inside will tell you that the auditorium was always hot and airless, even after expensive “improvements”. At the interval you’d find scores of theatregoers heading for the exits to take the air before wondering whether they could bear to go back inside. What the refit did achieve was to remove any element of character from the building’s interior.
I’m not one of those people who dislikes everything modern; in fact I love modernity and I may be the only person left in the city who doesn’t yet hate the Quad.
But a theatre should feel special – not like the budget airline check-in area at East Midlands Airport. There’s simply nothing like a gorgeous, old-fashioned, dark, luxurious theatre. Nottingham’s Theatre Royal and Wolverhampton’s Grand Theatre are prime examples.
Returning Derby’s theatre to the then still intact Hippodrome would have been perfect. But when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the Duke of York’s in London’s West End, or a former cinema like the Palace in Mansfield. It’s the thrill of the greasepaint that matters.
For some, of course, that thrill is too much. I’ve a friend who never goes to the theatre because she is so terrified that an actor might make a mistake that she cannot bear to watch.
Then again, I have another friend who is a passionate devotee, but who, 20 minutes into the first act, is always sound asleep. You can set your watch by him.
Yet even he would have struggled to doze off during one performance in Nottingham last year. There must have been a dozen large school groups in attendance. Hemmed in on three sides, I bemoaned my misfortune as hundreds of teenagers bobbed up and down, waved at their friends and chucked sweets to each other. I’d forgotten how loud you like things when you’re 15.
One girl had clearly never even seen a theatre before. She was so used to watching telly that her teacher had to explain to her that she was about to witness real, live actors, not a projection on to a screen. You couldn’t make it up.
As the lights dimmed, several embarrassed teachers hushed the exaggerated squeals of delight, but still I feared for the rest of the afternoon. I needn’t have worried: five minutes later, the teenage audience had fallen into silence, every one of them transfixed by what was going on before them.
At curtain’s fall they all jumped to their feet, cheering and whistling wildly. Their reaction wasn’t conventional, but it was genuine, and it was testament to the power of theatre.
Because, despite the apparent artifice of its props, plots and players, a visit to the theatre is one of the most “real” forms of entertainment. If the cinema is an escape from reality, then theatre is surely a journey straight into it.
There is nothing more intimate or immediate than watching a group of talented actors love, laugh, fight and mourn their way through a well-crafted story. You’re in their characters’ world, and each time it’s as thrilling and magical as the first.
That is perhaps theatre’s greatest gift, and it’s one on which the next generation of Derbeians looks likely to miss out.
But there is still hope. If the dream of a rescued Hippodrome is fading, perhaps we can count on a revitalised Playhouse, where touring, repertory and amateur productions could all find a home. We could even dedicate it to our own great dramatic actor, and patron of Derby’s theatre scene, the late Sir Alan Bates.