I’ve been travelling more than usual recently, and I want to follow
up on my recent post
about behaviour on trains, referring also to an
observation I made four years ago, when I had
'...half-watched
a young woman perform a 20 minute phase of what may have been a marathon meticulous
make-up, including fastidious uprooting of eyebrows, the full MOT…'
That was nothing. The other day a young woman sat down diagonally opposite me at the table, distributing
luggage and clutter where she could, and within about ten minutes, after a trip
to the toilet, she was surprisingly deshabillee and well into an intensive
make-up routine. We shared this space for more than two hours, and she was
still preening and powdering her image in her tiny mirror when I left the train
before its journey was complete.
The routine included two bouts (at least two, I did not pay
attention the whole time) of squeezing spots at close range with her head down
studiously. There was one lengthy spell of creaming the face and neck, and
several bouts of face-brushing with all the head-bobbing that goes with it.
After
about an hour we had eyelash fixing – tricky on a fast-moving train, I would have
thought. Do they have left-eye ones and right-eye ones? If so there’s a chance
she might have put left on right unnoticed, and/or vice-versa, which might leave
anyone looking a little inebriated. I did not inspect, although I suppose I
might have done if invited to the cause. And then we had fingernails selected
from a large box, apparently stuck on, then used to collect up all the scattered
unused ones.
I think that for some people, some of this might just be too intimate for
the public realm. I was hugely impressed with the contrast between her personal
concern and public disconcern.
There was a sense of urgency, almost aggression, in her actions,
in spite of the time it all took. Perhaps experience had taught her with this
particular journey that there was no slack for the job in hand: two and a half
hours to London
and the task must be completed… You wouldn’t want to be pulling in to the
terminus with more to do and not feeling able to leave the train perhaps, then being
whisked back up the line as the return journey started, still touching up round
the temples...
At one point I wondered if this was an unavoidable occupational necessity
– was she going to get off the train in London and get tipped out of a taxi
straight onto the stage in the west end? Had I unknowingly been privileged to witness the meticulous preparation of a new operatic star? OK, perhaps serving in a night club bar
or similar? My conclusion was not, because she kept pouring herself slugs of
vodka and sticky-sweet. I could be wrong.
As it happened, someone was taken seriously ill on the train during the journey. Medical expertise from among the passengers had to be called for, and then paramedics summoned to an intermediate station. Which felt to me, non-judgementally, like a little reminder: let her paint an inch thick, to this end she must come.
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