Dresses

The looming future of being a bridesmaid has pushed me in to a punishing exercise routine. So far I have leapt around to Jennifer Ellison’s West End Workout (surprisingly enjoyable), Davina McCall’s Power of 3 (very hard work but ultimately satisfying) and Pilates for Dummies (insanely hard, sweated like a racehorse and walked like I had soiled myself for about a week). I have also restarted swimming every morning before work. At a swimming pool filled with people with absolutely no body issues at all.

Yesterday I was forced to shower with a completely naked woman in a VERY small shower cubicle. She was scrubbing away, baps to the wind, whilst I was rammed in to a corner trying not to look anywhere. Then as I was getting changed I nipped across to a dry cubicle to put my socks on and a woman took that as a cue to pull back her curtain and have a lovely chat to me whilst she was completely naked. Why? Why? Why? The curtain is there for a reason. Use it. None of this however is as bad as the guy at my brother’s gym who regularly puts his foot up on the bench and blow dries his bits with the communal hairdryer. My brother is considering changing gyms.

Perhaps it’s me. I could well be too uptight. Looking for both bridesmaid dresses and Soap Award dresses has meant that I have spent a lot of time seeing myself in unflattering changing room mirrors. I seem to have modelled my look on the Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters. Hey! There’s a thought, maybe I don’t need a dress for the Awards. I could just find a sailor’s cap, go nudey rudey and pretend I am a guest presenter! But it wasn’t till I’ve spent this time with a mirror that I’ve realised just how many scars I have, and how many I have utterly no idea how I got them.

Some I obviously have total recall of. I can remember my finger being cut off in a door (surprisingly). Seeing your own blood hit the ceiling and then fishing your finger top out of a hinge is something that stays with you. I also have the reminder through having no feeling in that finger. Which is actually incredibly useful for helping you know your left from your right. 5 fingers= right hand. 4 finger= left hand. I can remember getting the scar on my knee (falling over on to broken glass), the scar on my arm (dropping the grill pan on to my arm when I was waitressing – the skin actually sizzled then shrivelled up, like when you chuck a crisp packet on a fire), the scar on my hip (It was claimed – by my brothers – that they were able to jump me on their bikes. All I had to do was lie there whilst they rode off the ramp they had set up and they would land safely on the other side. Sadly we became a bit over confident and I moved further and further back. The co-ordinated one on the lighter bike was successful, the less co-ordinated one on the heavier bike imbedded his pedal in to my side. I believe parental sympathy went along the lines of “well why on earth did you let them do it?”).

But I have absolutely no idea at all how I got the scar on my face. It’s not huge, about an inch long, right by my mouth and it’s not in photos of me when I am younger, so at some point I was hit in the face. Now I know it not huge so it’s not like I was mauled by a dog or was knifed or anything but you’d think I’d remember being smacked in the face by an anvil or something. My parents don’t remember either but given that our childhood incidents involve: one of us falling off a cliff (they held on and were pulled back up), 2 of us cutting our fingers off (different doors), one of us nailing a flip flop to their foot and a fish-hook going through a finger, I guess the lesser incidents are forgotten. My mum only really looks pale when she recalls looking up one day whilst she was on the phone and seeing me coming towards her. I was being carefully lowered from 4 floors above. I was wearing a pair of reins and was tied to a skipping rope.

Actually looking back it’s no wonder I have so many battle scars. But they have done me good. If nothing else I keep my clothes on in public changing rooms.