Going on holidays is hard work from the pruning and preening to the €98.53 reinforced Boots’ bag.  My preparation usually starts about 4 weeks prior to departure with the growth of bodily hair…to then allow for quick and long-lasting removal of the hair!  You’d be amazed how debilitating this can be. It’s like the gods just knew. As soon as I embarked on the annual growth fest, the sun came out. Everyday I arrived in The Fish Tank late and with the blackest, darkest clothes I had. I ended up in the 25 degree Irish summer wearing skirts and black tights, trousers and boots, one week in I couldn’t even get away with capri pants!  The main advantage to working with the Willy Wavers is that they don’t notice such things or if they do, they’re unlikely to ask “Hey Nemo, why aren’t you wearing half nothing like every other Irish person once the sun comes out?”  Add to that Pilates once a week (doing the hundreds with the sun shining in and creating a shadow of hairy legs that would make Big Foot jealous) and injuries which required attention by the very kind physical therapist I regularly visit. Now I know my legs are hairy. I’m a hairy girl. The upside? Lashes and lashes of, um, lashes, “striking” eyebrows, thick dark hair which stands the test of big hair rollers, GHD straighteners, industrial strength hair dryers .  But the downside is very thick, long, man-hair on my legs (and arms and underarms and the odd stray chin hair, but that’s for another day!) Anyway, back to my poor long suffering physical therapist, I prepare him by telling him I have preholiday growth and apologise for the state of my hairy legs. This would, of course, be alright if I only visited him once in the four week growth period. But nooooo, my body decides to let me down again and I’m in three times in three weeks. He must surely be thinking by now “Christ girl, shave them already. This is becoming a hazard for me!”

Ah but the hair growth is just one of the stresses of holiday prep. The other, for me, is holiday tat shopping. I’m the type of girl who buys her holiday stuff once a year and usually leaves most of it in whatever resort I end up in. Pick a Saturday, go to Penney’s, buy a HUGE bag load of stuff costing about €20, bring it home, try it on, decide to bring half back (never do!)…and throw the remaining half together with some semi normal stuff. When they talk about high street and designer mix I really don’t think they meant Penney’s mixed with Warehouse.  I have realised as I get older that while Penney’s worked a treat at 25, a decade later I just can’t quite carry off the practically see through, low quality, high trend get-up anymore.  So today was the final run around town and I think I did quite well. But I don’t understand it, I always manage to end up with about 10 skirts/trousers and 2 tops. What is it with me and my inability to match clothes?  I mean my lower body is not exactly the superior aspect, by all accounts the upper half is the one to shine, yet I still struggle to find anything to put on it, never mind accentuate it, as they say! And I’d buy more dresses except my body doesn’t suit the dresses of today – neither shape nor age wise. There is nothing like a pretty tea dress / summer dress to highlight the fact that my “amazing knockers dahling” are, in fact, a good three inches lower down my body than they were 5 years ago and that I have no waist to speak of (of course this is all to change once I lose the half foot off this waist). I always have this picture in my head of Barbadian-chic, tousled, wavy beach hair, tanned and toned in my holiday gear whether it’s by the pool, at the beach, in the bar, but somehow the reality is always more Benadorm than Barbados.  Still and all, nothing an ol’ mojito or two won’t fix!