Lipstick lover

What’s this – I haven’t blogged for weeks and then when I do it’s about lipstick?  We’re living in shitty times and I was so tempted to just post a picture of Nigel Farage with the title Oh Fuck today but I feel a strange, possibly slightly deranged, need to write about the waxy stubs I occasionally smear across my lips  instead.   Is it symptomatic perhaps?  The Bet Lynch form of therapy:  “There’s nowt a bit of lippy couldn’t solve”.  (Oh, if only.)

Anyway, I do like to pop on a little bit of lippy when I go out.  I’ve a nice orangey-red one right now.  I choose lipstick purely by the colours I think will suit me, like a pink that goes with my ears or a blood red that matches the veins in my eyes, that kind of thing. 

There’s no need to give each shade its own personal name as far as I’m concerned, that’s not a selling point.  I might vaguely see the labels on the rack when I’m buying them but they don't really register; they’re generally names derived from flowers or French words or fruits (strawberry, cherry, not so much kumquat).  Yesterday I realised that this orangey-red one I’m currently into could be called anything from Toxic Rust to Prickly Rash for all I know - so for some reason I decided to find out for sure and actually read the label.  I appreciate this isn't the mind-blowing info anyone else will be gagging to hear but if you've read this far then you may as well hang about for the answer....  

It's called Man Hunt!  I know, it's so 1972!

I am of course strictly anti-hunting for a start.... the only things I've ever hunted have been words and, in the past, some rare records and a house.  And as for the supposition that my quarry would be a man rather than any other variety of human...well, exactly - how very retro! (It would be, but one should never assume, should one?) 

Seems to me someone’s having a joyous time in whatever department it is that comes up with these less flowery names.  I want to work there.  Ah, imagine the whiteboards in the meetings.  It’s like those names they call house paints, especially from brands known for going beyond the realms of  Antique Cream with titles such as Elephant’s Breath, Arsenic, Earthworm, Sulking Room Pink, Down Pipe.   (Only one of those five isn't a real Farrow & Ball shade.  Can you guess which one?)

Whatever, I do rather like my lipstick’s non-politically-correct kitschy vibe, and I can’t help imagining an equally non-politically-correct 1970s advert for it featuring Valerie Leon and an E-type Jag - but  I just don’t think the manufacturer's intended market for a lipstick they call Man Hunt is women like me who are old enough to remember both...

Abstract moment of the week #11

I was so tempted to call this post ‘Just Another Phallic Monday’… but that might have suggested it was going to be the start of a new series and I’m not sure if I could, erm, keep it up.  However I can’t resist mentioning this once because it's tickled me...

I had coffee with a friend the other day who is not long back from a fantastic trip to Bhutan.  I know very little about Bhutan, but it sounds like a fascinating, peaceful and unusual place. Talking to my friend is always an education when it comes to travel.  I enjoyed looking at his photos of the dramatic mountainous scenery, people in national costume, the beautiful wildlife, and then he explained how there was so much decorative art everywhere, intricate carvings and detailed embellishment in the architecture, etc.  – all the things you might perhaps expect from a remote kingdom deep in the Himalayas.

What I hadn't expected, though, was to hear about the proliferation of imagery of a particular fertility symbol which here in the West we tend only to see scrawled on public toilet walls and concrete underpasses by less accomplished artists before being hurriedly removed by the authorities….   In Bhutan, however, it is normal to have it painted with great skill and finesse on the outside of your house, without embarrassment or censure, to bring good luck and protection.

I have to say, I do rather like the way they embrace it!  But I don't think my local council would approve if I did the same.