I'm in work with what looks like a blurred tattoo on the inside of my arm, at about the point where people cut their wrists before they get in the bath. Not that this thought has ever occurred to me before, I hasten to add.
Marion, you're too cool for school, says Nessa, who sits opposite me and who, by that last statement has just outed herself as being almost as cool and hip as me. In about 1965.
Where have you been?
The Borderline Club, I mutter, into my chest.
To see what? She is struggling to try and look impressed instead of laughing in my face. As I said she sits opposite me. Laughing is not a good option. I can make her life hell.
Holly Miranda, I mumble.
She fails to register any sign of recognition. I can sing all the tracks thanks to Luke Warm's music addiction and his propensity for turning up armed with bundles of CDs culled from NME, with which to drown out the sound of my voice (which is probably another reason why gigs are so popular, it suddenly occurs to me).
American band, I say. And I wasn't the oldest person there, I add, hastily.
Any good? She asks, quick recovery, despite the twitching lips.
Yeah, really good.
First support band was a teenager in heels she could hardly walk in, looking like one of the clones from Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love video (what? you who weren't even born in 1986, might well ask). She spent half an hour pouting at the audience in a mirror-studied sultry fashion, whilst executing long, pretentious guitar riffs, and then breathing incomprehensibly into the mike, accompanied by another girl in a flamenco dress, energetically playing a squeezebox which seemed like a lot of hard work for a sound that was totally obliterated by the drummer. Second support band featured a gorgeous, pouting blonde Barbie for real girls with amazing smooth, golden thighs like Beyonce and too much hair that she seemed just to have realised she had, and so needed to spend a great deal of time ostentatiously scraping it back and tossing it out of her eyes. Too late in life I realise I have natural heavy metal hair - just when I can't do the head toss for fear of dislocating my shoulder. A curly-topped chap amidst a group of what could have been Christian missionaries, with more than a passing resemblance to 118 (or 118) nodded his head so vigorously in time to her foot stamping in which everything jiggled that I thought it was going to fall off and roll across the floor. Even I fancied her. Whatever your musical taste, it really does make you wish you had stuck at the piano lessons.
The audience, mostly women, many of whom were in plaid, and FF cup bras (or not. Actually some of the men fitted into that category - especially the granddad in the black shirt ensemble) and you could see their breasts coming down the stairs a full two seconds before the rest of them. Luke Warm was transfixed.
I would have said I stood out due to my advanced years and chlorine treated hair, but I'm glad to say I was invisible. It's a mercy really. I often wonder about the popularity of novels and films in which being invisible is the plot device. Be female and over forty and big wow. Unless you stand out because you are wearing a pair of kitten ears and an unwise boob tube and tutu (not to be encouraged) you could probably walk into Tiffany's and leave with three necklaces and nobody would be able to describe you afterwards.
There must be a way of turning this to one's advantage.
