It's not often that I get off on a tangent (on a tangerine, as I heard someone say once) before I've even started with the post, but excuse me this once.
It's - almost - relevant.Some may say it with flowers, but my family does it with obscure catchphrases from programs no-one's ever heard of.
Mr Murphy, we'll forgive everyone else if they stare blankly at us when we sing...# What's the weight# Of 38# Brazilian anacondas? #Sir, sir, 17 tonnes, sir!Ahem. ANYWAY, there's a wonderful line from Trap Door, for them's that's seen it, where Berk summons up all his malleable theatricality and announces that the Flying Whatsit Thingy has gone, "Into...HIS BEDROOM..." accompanied by much thunder and flashes of lightning.Well, this afternoon (and here we get back on track) I went into...MY BEDROOM and cleaned under the bed, which, if you ask me, deserves its own thunder and flashes of lightning. I was half expecting to surprise a colony of Borrowers carting away whorls of cat hair to make pullovers out of. Normally, of course, I wouldn't touch the boxes under there with a barge pole (I wouldn't touch a barge pole), even if I could find one, containing as they do forgotten shoes, miscellaneous bits of one or several sewing machines - I've never had the patience to work out which - and my sequin collection. But the landlord is coming tomorrow to make an inspection of our new air-conditioner (though air-conditioning our place still seems to me as sensible as air-conditioning, say, a tomato) and I'm sure the next thing on his agenda will be assessing the shipshapeness of my under-mattress area. I'm in charge of the under-mattress area, sir! (My family and other animals would also be able to pick that one.)So, in between injecting myself with antihistamines, I found the dress. I'd made myself forget it was there. This is the dress that had, until the fatal moment, hung with reverence in my wardrobe, the only dry-clean only item
I owned, waiting for just the right opportunity to make its debut. The only dress I've ever had altered to fit, such was its beauty, and there it was in a crumpled mass, wedged between the wall and a plastic box on wheels.
I felt like I'd mistreated a child. And then I remembered coming home, months and months ago now, and, drunk on despair, peeling it off and chucking it on the floor. So lovely was this dress I'd bought it its own hanger. (Nearly wrote 'hangar' there, which would also have been strangely appropriate.)Because, you see, it was the dress's fault. It was the dress's fault that I wasn't pretty enough, interesting enough, different enough, outgoing enough, alluring enough. If only the dress had behaved itself, everything would have been wonderful. The dress was supposed to make me invincible - but, unfortunately for it, underneath it I was still me, and feeling like crap. So, to coin a phrase, I looked like crap dressed up, and I took it out on the only thing I could hold responsible - other than myself, natch.
As I say, this petulant spit happened some time ago, and I like to think I've got over myself a little bit since then. The dress didn't do it, it was Ms Fish in the library with the self-flagellation handbook. So this afternoon I forgave the dress. After all, it doesn't even fit any more. Dry clean be damned, I washed it and ironed it, and then I gave it away. I'm sure it will make someone very happy.
