Last Night My PJs Saved My Life

I may have mentioned my accident-proneness before. Well today, I excelled myself. I was coming out of M&S, and was temporarily blinded by a dust-bearing gust of wind. I staggered forward womanfully, and then my feet hit something...on hearing sounds of mild consternation around me,  I halted, and dabbed at my eyes. On regaining sight, I realised that I had walked into a sand sculpture of a monkey. This had done it no good at all. The man was very very forebearing about it, and a couple of punters (and me) dropped money into his hat. But I was mortified.
I am always doing things like this, and yet my arty friends continue to invite me to private views, unveilings of kinetic sculptures, and into their lovely homes. They are either foolhardy risk-takers,optimists, or have very short memories.  There is a trail of smashed, dented and broken objets d'art in my past. I don't confine my destructiveness to the "creative sector"; having broken lots of more prosaic objects too, but there is something about a delicately positioned wire erection depicting humanity's aspirations towards the the sublime in abstract, that will inevitably catch my eye. Closely followed by the corner of my handbag.
So it is with mixed feelings that I recieve the information from ROSPA  this year, that 5,450 people around the British Isles have managed to injure themselves on their socks, trousers, and pyjamas. I have had a sheltered upbringing, but I can just about envisage a few ways in which the unwary male might court a trouser injury. And if you include sliding across highly polished floors in with the sock lot, a reasonable picture emerges. But I cannot for the life of me imagine how I might injure myself on my pajamas. In fact, I am convinced that pyjamas are a force for good, and have probably saved far more lives than they have ended or endangered. Without them,the number of people sleeping naked would doubtless increase, and so, possibly,would the number of people...The British are a chilly and indolent race, thank goodness. However, remove the flanelette barriers separating couples of a usually tepid bedtime disposition, and who knows what might not spring forth in the way of unplanned episodes of lust?
I had some satin  sheets once, and very nice they were too. I also had some satin pyjamas, of a creamy, Clara Bow-like nature. I did make the mistake once of inserting myself between said sheets in said pyjamas, It was an error, as I was slipping all over the shop like a seal. If I were to do that again, I should have to sew Velcro on my bottoms.
JimJams are much on my mind today, as one aspect of my mission to town was a need to buy a pair. Without revealing TOO much about my domestic life, I can say that it often features sleeping on sofas, and in other people's spare rooms. Therefore decent winter pyjamas are a must.  But can they be had? Not even for ready money. Practically all garments I saw today in the nightwear sections fell firmly into two camps. One being " Cheap Rhino-skinned Hooker". What sort of woman snuggles into bed wearing  harsh red nylon mini-pants edged with spiky lace, and an underwired top?
The other category is " Infantile Simpleton". Pink. Lots of pink..and soft fluffy fabrics, embellished with appliqued bunnies and bears and birds and stupid words in curly writing. I am appalled when I so much as toy with the idea of wearing a pair ; a sad-eyed cartoon kitten  stretched and straining across my improbable breasts.
In the end, I discovered a third, small sub-category; Mad Old Poorly Woman pyjamas. I shan't describe them. A girl has to retain some mystery. Suffice it to say that I am The Woman In Blackler's; (which reigned supreme as the reliable purveyors of sturdy winceyette nightwear for the gentlewoman, sadly missed). I shan't sleep THAT soundly, though, as I shall be brooding on ways to injure myself with the things.

Street Life

Yesterday I had a very full Mathew St experience. This time last year I was actually working in Mathew St, bringing glamorous cabaret and vintage chic to a largely indifferent,sometimes actively hostile,population. Of the many eye-openers during this period,several stand out. I had not known that rats get up so early in the morning, or that sane-looking office types start drinking at lunchtime on Friday and do not stop drinking until the early hours of Sunday morning. Or that it was possible to exist on fried lard and lipgloss, and yet maintain a figure which one is perfectly happy to display in two pieces of tinsel and a thong. And that,of course, was just the boys.
Many, many marvels.
Saturday was marginally more sedate at first; I was embarking on a Memory Lane "Not Just Vintage" Fair, in the rather lovely premises of the club that used to be "Rubber Soul". To this end, I had assembled twelve crammed bags of satin and shiny retro things, plus a clothes rail. The Giant Boy is a massive help on such occasions, being possessed of a sunny temperament and huge muscles. As it was silly-o'clock, he was also still asleep. I phoned my cab people and requested an estate car and a driver of more than usually sanguine personality. Instead I received a grump in a hatchback. "You will never" he proclaimed "get ALL THAT in THERE".
There are many statements issued by my co-punters in this vale of tears we inhabit that irk me. "Refer to Card Issuer" , "Your Call IS Important To Us" "Internet Explorer Cannot Find The Webpage" and "The Trouble With YOU is.." being but several. However, when someone tells me I can't do/think/drink something, a ferocious and probably rather infantile bit of my brain wakes up and drives me towards a place of  insane stubbornness. "You are now entering Insane Stubbornness" reads the sign.
So I got all that in there, and off we went.
Mathew St was tranquil in the early morning;only a few dedicated pissheads were to be seen bothering brave Norwegian tourists, and the body count was low.
The GB and I unpacked, unfolded, arranged and hung a series of delicious garments and shimmery jewels. Then he realised he was awake, and promptly went to sleep on a banquette. I had to revive him with a bacon sandwich, wafted under his nose in the manner that  burnt feathers and sal volatile might be ministered to a fainting Grand Duchess. And it was cowingly cold..the club managers had decided that it wasn't financially viable to put the heater on as, and I quote,  "It's a very big building". Queerly, it was hot as hell in the toilets, appropriately in the basement, so various stallholders headed off there for a warm when they had lost feeling in their feet, and ideally, their sense of smell. I decided to stand in the doorway with a fag instead. And that was how I saw the untoward goings-on going on in the doorway next to Vivienne Westwood.
"Gosh!" I ejaculated. The barmaid smoking next to me looked on, unimpressed. "Just imagine, they will be old enough to drink in here in a few years" I said to her. She shrugged in a world-weary fashion." We threw them out of here an hour ago" she said, stubbing her cigarette out in a lumpy pool of sleet.
There is a certain camaraderie generated by these occasions. All we dismally deep-frozen entrepreneurial types helped each other, in ways far too goody-goody to relate. As the Giant Boy had baled out to visit a dubious pool hall, I was left with masses of very heavy bags, no taxi, and heavy rain. Three angelic types magicked up a cab, and loaded me and my dripping bundles into it.  I was exhausted, aching, and poorer by . £30.00, but I shall do it all again next Saturday because I have no sense and no choice.
Many young yet bald men were shouldering their way through the sleet, with nothing more than a packet of cigarettes in their shirt pockets to keep them warm. Young women who had learnt how to walk on seven-inch heels stalked the greasy cobbles , wearing dresses made from clingfilm and with their wood-shaving blonde ringlets unwinding lankly as the rain sheeted down. Everyone was yelling happily at each other; some revellers attempting to eat chips despite a downpour that had already seen several plastic trays of burgers meet a watery end.
It was 4.30 on a perfectly foul winter's afternoon, and Mathew St was just getting going.