Girlie essentials!

It probably won't be of any interest to the males in the audience, but it's been nice - and reassuring in some peculiar way - to be able to report that I've found a good beautician and a good hairdresser! I don't suppose many of you think of me as a snappy dresser or even, possibly, as someone who cares a lot about their appearance... Part of it is to do with a distinct lack of any practical advice on any matter relating to physical appearance or dress sense or anything else 'vain' in my upbringing, so I've struggled on without any clear sense of style for years... and I suppose that part of the problem in the UK was one of being too shy to do anything about it, so I didn't!

Well girls, this is Australia, where you can walk into the biggest stores of the biggest names in designer fashion or beauty wearing shorts and flip-flops if you want to. Bond Street? Pah! I can't say that I actually have walked into the Sydney Chanel boutique, for example, wearing shorts and flip flops, but I just feel that I could. Here they just don't care if you're a size 6 or 16, or size 26 for that matter. They don't comment on your nails, your teeth or your hair.

Some of this is undoubtedly to do with the fact that probably 85% of Australian women don't seem to have any sense of style at all. A fairly standard 'uniform' for women of all ages is a 3/4 sleeve shirt with a rounded hemline, worn open-necked over cut-off jeans or below-knee-length shorts and flip flops. Possibly a short-sleeved T shirt if you're feeling adventurous. Hmm.

This is all outside of Sydney/Melbourne, of course. Sydney-siders are a breed apart and they're sharp dressers - more New York than London! Anyway, over here I somehow feel a bit more confident and have decided that at 40 years old NOW is the time to get a decent hair cut, a regular facial and a manicure! And what a joy it is to turn myself over to the beautician firm in the belief that she will not snigger to the other girls in the salon as soon as I've paid the bill and left. Blackheads, wrinkles, thinning hair, sun damage, bushy eyebrows, untrimmed cuticles - they just take what they find and do something with it, accompanied by intelligent conversation and absolutely no sniggering. I love it. Admittedly, today was my first facial - at an Ella Bache salon - but it was great and amazingly cheap, and I thought I would make it a regular treat, along with the occasional manicure and pedicure. OK, so when you see me in February you won't actually be able to discern any of these things underneath the layers of clothing and the jetlag, but I'll know it's there!