Diary of Lisa Taylor, reluctantly 42 (and a half)

Or.. 'f.ck me I'm forty.. two.. and a half', though can look 38 on a - not so deluded - good day. Or 'How to reconcile a well experienced mind trapped in a still - but for how long? – youthful body.' Don't have the 30somethings angst/problems, neither have the resigned (?) ageing baby-boomers in safe family territory outlook yet. Here's how I cope, one day all sexy women will get old... but never invisible. © Lisa Taylor 2005/6/7/8/9. Jeez.. so much for the 42 and-a-half delusion

Friday, November 24, 2006

22 November - Don't believe your Eyes

Visiting a friend who works in a top Beauty salon /spa in expensive part of town, as you do.
Am at reception with her, soaking up explanations of various treatments, all sounds pretty scientific these days, they even have vitamins in spray form. Guess they appeal to the woman/man too busy to actually get a glass of water and ingest that way. Must be why they cost 3 times as much then.
All treatments and products sound so good, so problem solving that I would like to have them all, except that, should I ever have that kind of spare money, I’d be running off on cruise to Antarctica first, stopping off in all of South America and fitting in Greenland and the North Pole too. You get my drift/philosophy here.
Funnily enough all the therapists that work there are under 30 and in possession of flawless, unlined complexions themselves. Wonder if clients are subliminally thinking it’s the spa environment that’s responsible for this luminous skin/health and not just YOUTH dew! It must feel ridiculous at some point to ask a 27 year old about what collagen plumping thing works best or this laser or that laser. Ok you don’t have to have had cancer to be an oncologist, I know that, but it still seems odd. What would these young beauticians really know about the psychological scars of feather lines spreading on older women’s faces? Anyway, this expensive and powerful looking lady arrives, sort of Jackie Collins but ten years younger - maybe - and she’s wearing the big black shades a’ la Bono. She must notice me looking at her (raining outside so yeah, what's with the shades?) and she volunteers ‘I’ve just had my eyes done’.
‘Show me show me ‘ I find myself clapping enthusiastically. The shades come off and there are these beautiful bloody and black and blue stitches festooning her eyelids. She had 7mm of skin fold removed she tells me. That’s practically one centimetre folks! My mother will need this as she’s nearing 70 and drooping eyelids will make it difficult to see (wonder if actually would prevent watching inane television in which case.. am tempted to leave as is) and she’s scared of the operation as it is and here you have instead a happy testimonial declaring ‘Only a few days indoors and now just feeling the pinch and a bit of discomfort’ but clearly proud.

She then tells another story about her second botox going wrong (same 'doctor' performing) and her whole brow collapsing and leading to a month at home and a sort of Frankenstein look. Must have been bloody worrying, you can’t really believe them when they say it will pass and return to normal as this wasn’t supposed to happen!!!! I can’t ask her what she does for a living or how it affected her job /life. But she’s here for some other consultation re. laser lipo as ‘It’s time to look after myself’ . Whe hey, go ‘girl’. If Demi does it….
Later on I see a famous actress coming in . She’s 31 and here for back to back facials. 'Why 2?' I ask? Because one pumps up the skin more if done on top of another one. Wow. So that’s what it takes to be splendid on red carpet (or wedding, adds the not so star struck Oz beautician who also has a bar job in the evenings to save more money). A couple of hundred quid. Cool. And then they retouch the magazine pictures anyway. No wonder none of us can compete or, conversely, why people watch celebs in the jungle sans make up/retouching. Only time to believe your eyes.

Monday, November 20, 2006

20 November - Pool No Water

tbc

19 November - Bush & Colours

I had to read it on a bloke’s blog!!!
At least one solution to one of my ageing problems has been found: hair dye for your smaller tufts, though currently we're still on the fingers of two hands for the white ones. Anyway, can't remember the name of the product, shall let you know.
And his is a funny blog. I though it was being written by a teenager but it’s actually a grown up man with a kid even. Hard to tell. But he’s a doper and a keg drinker so … childish enough. He writes a lot about American football (he’s from Vermont) and I found myself glazing over. It was a good lesson. Once in a while, say every two weeks, we women should be made to read a few pages of American football reporting (it is essential that it should be a sport we know nothing about in terms of rules, or most famous players, how the leagues work etc). This would give us some understanding of what it’s like for a guy to listen to us talking about: our friends, our family, our job, our holidays we want to go on, the stuff we need to buy/want to buy, our family health problems, the bitch at work, having to stand on the tube this morning, the sagging skin etc… In other words... wouldn't you glaze over?

18 November - Boring & Property

A party, in the City. Lush drinking is provided and canapes to exploding arteries level. There is entertainment, and a Bond theme. Yet, some colleagues are glued to a table and their martinis. Two late twenties colleagues who never have much to do with each other realise they're both from South Africa and go down the ‘I didn’t think you were South African!!!' (yeah like, the accent is so not noticeable). Then they progress to where from: 'Durban and you?' Something else I don't catch. And then on to the price of property as turns out she has purchased 2 flats about 2 years ago ('now everything has gone up') , he’s buying one and wow with the World Cup coming it will all go ballistic in terms of prices, rental yields and so on.

And there you have it. Property is the #1 boring subject the world over. I bet there’s a couple of people as I write now discussing the shack they’ve just bought in Cuzco or downtown Harare and how they plan to buy one more and rent it out etc etc.
And of course it starts early. Wonder what the exact age is… at 18 no thought of house market, then suddenly at 22? Bang, obsession or later at 24? Who knows? Clearly I was part of this circle of hell as I bought at 26 so must have been pondering it seriously from..... 25.
Thank god they have repeats of This Life so current 20somethings can see that sharing a house leads to interesting intercouplings and arguments, should they fail to make the deposit.

16 November - Launches & post-ponements

I ring a friend to to out on Sat and she's not coming out. At home moping as has had 2nd editor fired and first or third art director fired at the magazine where she works. In fact magazine not out yet and launch which had slipped Autumn to February is not slipping to September 2007. How can a women's magazine be 18 months in the making? Victoria Beckham may be dead by then and what would they write about then??? There go 20 pages a month (it's a weekly I believe). Am thinking of all those journalists preparing dummy issue after another, all their topical words which will go unused all those beauty products tested which it will be pointless writing about again in September as will have been superseeded. Wonder if the Ed has a blog where she laments what it's like to be owned by some murdochy-newscorp-skythingie conglomerate. What kind of a confidence knock can it be to be relieved of steering a magazine to publication after a mere few weeks on the job? How do they know she's not going to cut it? Mags, shmags, leaf through a few these days, read hardly any. Prada or Primark, it's all the same these days.

15 November - Cards & Art

Am looking for a birthday present and as we either have everything by now or can’t afford what we don’t have, I turn to the website of the Royal College of Art, for their ‘Secret’ postcards section. You know, for £35 you can buy either a postcard or something which will turn out to have been created by a famous artist and therefore will be of a value exceeding the £35. You can view on line and register to buy though on the actual day you have to schlep it to the RCA. No doubt there will be a queue of those usual people that stay up the night before the Horrids sale or the night before Take That tix go on sale so I doubt I’ll use this for a gift but no harm in looking. Stone me they have 2,500 cards. Serious overload. But I have time. Though if I had to try and identify the Emins and so on, I'd have to look again? Surely she wouldn't want to make it that simple to guess.
After a while…it’s all a bit boring or repetitive this modern art subject. There’s the same old, same old themes, there’s swimmer, there’s some clouds, someone representing dogs, someone drawing shoes, or nudes or lots of textual stuff. Where’s my beloved Jenny Holzer ripped off to death. But you know a postcard with ‘love’ written on it or ‘infinity’ doesn’t seem much better than something they sell at Clintons cards. Then there’s another swimmer, another dog, another nude and so on.
I don’t care if it’s a Hockney I could get for £35, it’s boring. In the end after scrolling through the 2,500 – twice – I have about a dozen under consideration. None screams buy me. I may go… 9am on a Saturday… am kidding myself. How sad. And yet there will be a scramble no doubt, bit like the (avoided so far) Stella at H&H or Mouret at Gap and so on. Don’t care if you can re-sell it on Ebay for a large profit. It’s like a jumble sale and you got a bargain. So what?

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

13 November - Pregnant 16 & 46

The young girl my friend Leah was fostering, Ann, is now living in shared accommodation which you can do when you get to be 16. This is in teh charming area of Tottenham. She says in her house there are 6 young girls: 2 working, 2 studying, 1 pregnant and her. Wonder which one Ann will be. Currently she’s not in education, she’s not working and she’s not pregnant and as she has no overriding passion for anything (sport, fashion, music, TV) it’s hard for me to fathom what she does with her 24 hours in a day. Having met the girl a few times, my money is on the pregnant scenario. The one guaranteed to offer her some company in amongst all her transient relationships. She’s had 22 placements since she was taken into care. That doesn’t bode well for a settled future. Having just read an interview in which Courtney Love says she had about the same number of carers and turmoil, I could be wrong. Ann could become a different kind of monster, a functioning and rich one. But Courtney seems to have had more get up and go and some talent for writing/making music, which is as yet totally absent in Ann. Not even her self-centredness is extreme enough to point to a future media star.

It does however make me think whether it’s worse to be pregnant at 16 or .. 46? Another friend is currently in the throes of having to wonder about this one more time. Or whether it is the pre menopause effects that throw cycles out of kilter? She’s rather hoping for the latter. Relationships that are only a year old or so are not considered steady or permanent, not in London and hers falls into that category: they don’t live together, he doesn’t want to, they have money worries despite eventual joint income at the £80/90k level now considered bare minimum for London (what a joke). But he freelance and she not been employed in new job for long so position not that secure (forgive the Borat lack of grammar speak). What’s worse? Who’s going to resent it more? This cataclysmic intrusion in a life still to be lived. Next 20 years looking after kid thus removing long w/ends abroad, wandering about exhibitions and nice restaurants and reading books and papers, magic idle w/ends… plus truly, that trip to Brasil or Vietnam next year? Forget about it. All future Xmas at one or other set of parents. No nearby friends or family able/willing to share burden of raising kid. No more sex as too tired - he’s no spring chicken either although what with tales of Stacey’s 50somethings, as detailed in previous posts, maybe lack of energy is the least of their problems.
Talking of which last summer Stacey had sex on same day with two brothers. Don’t ask. They were not in the same room together but yes, afternoon and night. That would have presented a difficult paternity choice. Can DNA tell which brother it would have been? She was late and lived with the prospect of this conversation for a good ten days (the brothers are also married so er…clandestine child). All was cleared up after her cycle returned, but boy what a problem to have. As for my friend… a few more days and the visit to Boots is inevitable.

10 November- Shit & Serenity

A top tip. It’s always good to have a friend or two who’s 5 to 10 years older than yourself. The things they tell you! A fiftysomething revealed an episode of incontinence a few months back and it wasn’t pretty to hear. My first thought was ‘Isn’t that supposed to happen, like, when you’re 80???’ And so now I can add it to the list of worries for next decade. Great. However, my latest missive from another nearly fifty friend who lives abroad is that with hormones abating, there is serenity at hand. All she has time for apart from working and dealing with some increasing health ailments is is walks on the beach (she’s near one in California), reading and eating and meeting up with friends. Not much is said about the boyfriend (an addition of only a year or two). So yes, no more feverish correspondence on what he did or didn’t do, what he said or didn’t say, where it’s all going and how one was kept up all night and ravished in some unusual manner. No, nothing about him at all. Serenity she calls it. So all my current tossing and turning (actually I sleep very well, I do all my worrying awake which is a waste of time) will cease and will be substituted with serenity. But that doesn’t sound exciting. Does one notice when the dramas suddenly disappear or is it a slow, imperceptible process or one where the thought that previously worried you arises and this time it simply gets forgotten or not dealt with?

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

8 November - Office life kills

Just very, very, very slowly.

7 November - It pays to be Zen - ask Leonard Cohen

Off to Soho House to see a preview of this brilliant documentary on Leonard Cohen. I kind of avoided him when growing up as was appropriated by sad hippies I thought. So it’s a joy to find that his lyrics do make sense now that am older. It’s also a joy to realise what a top sense of humour he has. Totally recommended and hope Bono’s endorsements make you laugh as much as we did in the viewing theatre. Something to do with a not so good metaphor he chose to use whilst being filmed in front of a wooden door. Makes sense when you see it. Thank god he wasn’t there to hear us. The only popstars in attendance were a gorgeous pregnant Beth Orton who’s in the tribute gig filmed for the documentary and Andy Bell who isn’t. Sadly no gorgeous Rufus Wainwright. Anyway, Leonard is now 72 or so, ie closer to my father’s age than I’d have pegged him at. Why can’t Leonard be my father? They both still have a full head of hair. ......

After I go meet some friends in town for a travel fair in Docklands. We meet in Soho, not Docklands god forbit I set foot in that place full of robots again. I thereby miss a much funnier evening with Toph kidnapped at Blakes by some fat and ugly but loaded Russian client of a friend of his who turns up with a Russian girl/friend and a Swedish girlfriend. Both stunning apparently. Wonder if it makes any poor guy hop mad that money doesn't buy love but plenty of armcandy. Toph turns up the worse for wear but am impressed he left the clutches of potential sodom for me and my low key friends.
tbc

5 November - Pigs & Battersea

I made it! I was inside a Pink Floyd sleeve.

.....tbc

4 November - Cameramen & Fleamen

Dubai beaches to Brompton Road basements... the lovers come in all shapes and sizes and locations. My friend D's has not had a great year men wise, but the last quarter is picking up. Her flirtation with the fleaman, (the first snog with a tradesman I get to I hear about) who's returned many times to rid her new flat of ... fleas, wouldn't you guess. They are not her fleas by the way, but a previous owner with cat and stored clothing and rugs and old sofas etc.
D's mojo was dormant and worryingly so as she's 45ish and this leads to wondering if there are still fish in the sea at this stage, but the young fleaman has re-awakened the mojo alright.

But whilst they were busy reading each other's signs (does a top coming off as he works qualify as a come on she wondered? I said yes but she asked me after the event, had she texted me the deed would have been instant) she went to a friend's 40th in Dubai and met the shortest but horniest man of her life, in the shape of a mediterranean cameraman.

....tbc....

3 November - Funerals & MTV

Modern etiquette. How does it work at funerals. And before anyone is offended this post is not going to cover how the death of a friend upset me, it’s a take on other stuff. So discovered that W. the ex is ‘doing’ the music at M’s funeral and wake! Darn! how am i going to avoid him at a funeral? May have to grow up and speak to him and bury my silly little hatchet which is not a hatchet cause truly he's one of the most decent persons you'll ever meet, but since our parting of the ways a few years back, I’ve cut all contact (works better this way if you do it from day one. No chance of hanging on for either of you. Plus I was mega annoyed. One day am in LA getting lovey dovey emails from him, the next day am home from the airport and he’s having ‘the conversation’ just when I was about to catch another flight on same evening, back in the days when it was all go go go. I was very surprised (back in the days when I didn’t much notice stuff, now I err on the other side, though have always been good at avoiding the ‘what are you thinking’ question) but the measure of my love cup must have been on the low side as I remember uttering the immortal words (well, in my own folklore) “But W!!!! why didn’t you tell me when I was in LA??? Would have stayed out there!!!!”. Followed by the usual “Get out, get out, leave me alone” type utterances. He was trying to be considerate of course and had not wanted to do dumping by email or phone or text. Admirable. Thing was… I was between jobs and Malibu and LA were fab and my local friend had indeed suggested staying out there much longer. But I had said no, must go back to W! Of course nothing but cash stopping me from going back to drown my shortlived sorrows, but I didn’t. Hence W. has to pay for altering my destiny – for which am grateful in retrospect – with the punishment of my silence. Am sure he now considers it a blessing.

Later that evening… I realised that a funeral service and wake is a sombre celebration but still operates in a similar fashion to any party. So it was perfectly easy not to engage in conversation with the ex at crematorium and drinks in a nearby club. I did consider it but as he was wearing a flamboyant suit that I had hated when we were together, the decision was made. Only other thing of note (I won’t go into what reflections the death of a not even as old as me person inspires) was that several of the mourners had arrived fresh from the MTV awards in Denmark the night before. They probably had more reflections than mine on the subject of here today, gone tomorrow. Apart from the fact that noone was terribly young and unless you are, hanging backstage with hissy fits artists is not that magic. But if you were young, it’s FANTASTIC. M would have been there and having a blast, criticising sets, routines, lighting, costumes and … everything. But in her own unique funny northern way. ‘Oh get on with it!’

2 November - Jack Black or Kyle Gass?

Last night went to premiere of Jack Black’s new film as Tenacious D "The Pick of Destiny". Abysmal but hey… my first time walking on red carpet in Leicester sq. Is it really I thought? In all this year I was missing a red carpet and it’s for this movie??? And to make it more sad no one, but no one took our picture and we were dressed up nice. Actually I’ll revise that, it wasn’t abysmal, it had its moments, but they would be best appreciated by teenage boys. I mean, there’s a song called ‘Kickapoo’ and I failed to understand the three words it was made up of and just thought it was nonsensical instead of scatological. I did like the acid trip sequence though. Very warm and cuddly.
Anyway, at the bar afterwards, Ronnie Dio made room for me to get a drink. Ronnie Dio! I kid you not. He’s older and shorter than me and he did beg the question of ‘how could it possibly be that this blink and you miss it gentleman could have inspired utter rock axe devotion?’ I simply don’t see it but then I don’t get other impish elves like Mick Jagger either. And both have probably shagged vast amounts of women. By the time we arrived at said bar, having detoured to see a rock band on the way and been surprised that kids now like long haired straightforward rock. How bizarre!, the lovely Jack had gone home or elsewhere so I got to talk to Kyle Gass, he's the one with even more unattractive butt cheeks on the film poster. He had obviously been talking to too many people already as my first entertaining question “Kyle, what’s on your ipod?” was met with the laconic “I don’t have an ipod”. Further chat remained curiously one sided so I took the hint and went back to consider whether, 20 years ago or so I’d find the ex singer of Busted attractive (he was there – can’t remember his name, probably never knew it). And yes I would have seen as I have a weakness for well defined eyebrows, though the Gallagher brothers left me cold, so this particular generalisation is a bit pointless. Ps. The rock slide in the film? They didn’t do it. They were kneeling on a surfboard thingy with wheels and were dragged by hired hands. Ahhh! I knew something didn't fit. J & K too short and fat to successfully slide? But what do I know. Hadn't recognised Grohl playing the devil. 'What, the clue about playing drums only how Grohl does had passed you by?' says a snickering friend. Hey, I'm a girl! I can tell Edge from Gilmour guitar style but drums is too geeky surely.

1 November - Age & Cold

I have a house guest. She says ‘It’s minus 4 this morning out there’ as she gets dressed. I think pah! That’s nothing, am on pre-menopause temperature and feel the cold a lot less than …. ever. Now could be the time to go flash some booty in Newcastle or up North where they go out in Winter wearing vests.
One sat. recently when it first got cold, we were having brunch outside with Toph and his friend AP. At some point whilst still waiting for the warming influence of the first cappuccino and fruit porridge (this cost a fiver a bowl, Nothing Hill didn’t you guess, though Latimer Road side so not that posh), I stripped to my tiny top. The boys said ‘You hot?’ and I inadvertently mentioned the m word as in ‘Am pre-menopausal, this must be what it starts to do to you, am hot’ it only lasted a few seconds, but er… it’s now etched in their brains probably. Luckily they don’t read women’s magazines so they may be unaware of ads for lubricants and homeopathic remedies for loss of desire. Not there yet but dreading it.