Open Writing

Why does it take ladies so long to choose new outfits? This is a question usually asked by men and followed up with a smug description of how quickly they acquired their last purchase. ‘Saw it in the window, tried it on, etc etc.’ You know the sort of implication, as if this is all there is to it.

What they fail to realise is that women actually derive pleasure, not to mention fun, from the exercise. That’s another thing with us, buying is an actual exercise. Like anything else, women put more energy into it. Also, women are great improvers, always eager to go one better than nature, given the appropriate outfit. It takes time and effort.

I had to repeat this evidence, in my defence, after a trip to Manchester with my daughter recently.

We spent a whole day shopping for wedding outfits and returned empty handed. All that our bags contained was a placating bag of mixed chocs for daughter’s husband Mike and a crusty cob, which I had optimistically bought for tea, if we hadn’t missed the train back home, that is. ‘This must be the dearest ruddy loaf in the country,’ was my husband’s only comment. He naturally included the train fare. ‘What were you doing all that time?’

Looking back over the interminable dash from one ‘Sale’ placard to another, it hardly seemed an hour since we walked so chirpily past the snack bar outside Victoria Station.

My head so filled with visions of endless size 14’s waiting to be tried on, I smiled benevolently at a bespectacled elderly gent sipping coffee in a window seat. He smiled back pleasantly, until we were at eye level, then to my surprise he rolled his eyes wickedly, opened his mouth and wobbled his tongue at me, grinning so offensively, I forgot all about fashion euphoria.

First stop was the communal changing room at a store. When trying on, midst some of the slender teenage stock, I sometimes feel like a stump in a forest. One major store thankfully, still retains single cubicles. I tried a beautiful silk two-piece, which looked most elegant on the hanger. Yet I walked out in it to confront daughter looking like Widow Twanky on washday.

The one thing I enjoy on Manchester trips is lunch. Two of us usually visit a food centre or sometimes a restaurant. But time was running out, so we decided to snatch a serve-yourself. When it was my turn the coffee machine unfortunately dried up and by the time I eventually joined my daughter she was ready to resume the hunt.

Monday is normally a good day for a browse. Elderly assistants are mostly fully occupied, muttering and ruminating among their stock, while younger ones are eagerly confessing their weekend sins to each other. The cosmetics are always fully manned with telescopic-sighted staff, ever alert for secret perfume squirters like me.

Selling clothes is not easy, but I wish some assistants would not stoop to insincerity in their efforts. If they must comment, I prefer the plain insulting truth, there is no way of escaping the mirror’s verdict anyway.

While daughter and I were indulging in a leg-crossing laugh at me in a black diaphanous cocktail dress, which made me look like one of those fat legless reflections in Blackpool’s Hall of Mirrors, a beautiful young assistant walked in and said quite seriously ‘Oh, doesn’t that suit you.’ Meanwhile, back in Piccadilly, a 20-minute gallop away, the first outfits we tried were waiting to be claimed, and only half-an-hour to train time. Could we?

When we eventually arrived at the store we discovered that our suits had been sold and the 20-minute gallop had taken 30 minutes – we had missed the train, the one that would have taken me and my loaf back in time for tea and perhaps a warmer reception!

The following day we bought lovely outfits in Huddersfield – almost as delightful as the first ones we tried on in Manchester!