Wednesday 12 October 2011

Skilled Scrubber Wanted No Timewasters

Have you got a "Skillset"? I might have one somewhere but I may have sat on it and broken it..I wasn't allowed a chemistry set, for reasons obvious to those of you familiar with my proneness to accidents. I did have a dressing table set, in blue plastic.In fact, I had several,over the years. My Dad kept buying them for me at Christmas. There was a plastic comb which left teeth in your scalp,a brush with a set of plastic bristles that invariably became embedded in your hair when it separated from its moorings, and a mirror with a long handle,and some floral doings on the back. The whole thing would be dead by January,but never mind,because my birthday was in April and he would go straight out and buy me another one. This went on until I was 17,when he discovered that the local chemists sold  Max Factor Perfume Gift Sets. Or in fact, set. He only bought one type, which was called "Electrique",in a high-voltage shade of blue . The perfume bottle was firmly gripped by a small,fuzzy black cat,which wore a diamante collar and a facial expression reminiscent of the late Zsa Zsa Gabor trying to remember how many husbands she had had. I had racked up about seven of these by the time he died, and I never saw one ever again. I think Max Factor may have got wind of the fact that their only market for these vile things had now ceased to be, and gave up making them. Other relatives were keen on giving me things in sets, too. Underwear sets loomed over my teenage years. They concentrated firmly on the below-the-waist area, as indeed did I. There would be a "waist slip", always completely square in shape,with accompanying panties, both trimmed in nylon lace of the scratchy and hard sort. Pastels held sway.
Then bra slips came along, they were the mod thing for the kooky teen. In nerve-shattering "Psychedelic" prints and fabrics so synthetic that when you took them off they stuck to your hair with static and lit up your bedroom. I think a number of UFO sightings reported in the 1960's were attributable to girls taking their slips off. So.....sets. Bad News, I think you will agree. And now we have to have our skills presented in them, according to the blatherings of some recruitment company that sends me mad e-mails from time to time. I have a few skills, I think. I can make dolls out of pegs, and blow smoke rings. I can ferret out unintended double-entendre , and once won a prize from the Liverpool Echo for my colouring-in. It was a colouring-in book,and I swear I will finish it one day.
I can remove stains from practically anything. But then I get stains on practically everything too.  I tell you,it is very fortunate that the human skin comes in wipeable finish. Imagine how we would look now, with all the smears and spots collected in the course of an average day, if they didn't,usually, come off. Lots of my young friends have tattoos. They call it "body art" now,and it is wildly elaborate and expensive. I don't think I want one, I can't keep to the same hair colour for two weeks. Permanence upsets me, I reserve the right to be inconsistent and whimsical. One of the many reasons why I can't drive, I think, neither being qualities required in,say, a 747 pilot. Sometimes you just want stolid attention to detail and procedure. Not in my "Skillset", I regret to say. But if you want someone to get a strange mark off your cockpit, I'm your gal.

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