Tag: Acupuncture

Girl from space

c1c3a75f5b078aac3a1ead5cf64822efAbout 5 years ago I went to see a comic who was warming up for an Edinburgh stint.  It had all the hallmarks of an Edinburgh stint warm up show; a lot of the material was sketchy, and the comic was making little asides to himself and jotting notes in a pad about which jokes worked and which didn’t.  The loudest laughs came from a section where the comic talked about the absurdities of women’s fashion, and it’s a section that I’ve seen him replay on TV comedy quiz shows on more than one occasion.

I don’t mind.  It is a good bit.  The comic talked about the current trend for big bags (popularised by Victoria Beckham amongst others) and tiny, high heeled boots.  With big hair.  It’s what is called in fashion mags a ‘ groomed’ look, and suggests wealth and glamour.  The comedian used it for reductio ad absurdum; if we followed this trend doggedly, the world would be populated by women transformed into some sort of dinosaur throwback, tottering around on heels, bent double by the weight of their bags, half blinded by their own hair.

He told it a lot better than I did.  As you can tell, because it’s an image that has stayed with me longer than the name of the comedian did.  I’ve never been particularly interested in fashion, beyond aspiring to look like Bette Davis in the latter section of Now, Voyager and realistically being satisfied with my effort if I wear something other than jeans.  But I recognised the style of dress that he talked about and I recognise the pain that it must, it will, cause if subscribed to everyday.

Manchester is a curious place for fashion.  People work very hard to belong to a particular clique.  At the moment, any Friday Night in the Northern Quarter, a war is being waged between the hipsters (attire:  vintage, plaid shirts, cropped tops mix and match) and the glamour crowd (short structured dresses, fake tan, backcombed hair).  I never witness these wars, because I’m usually tucked up at home writing another bloody blog, but I do witness the fallout on a Saturday morning.  Today, as I stepped out for my acupuncture appointment (for regular readers the soundscape today was Clayderman revisiting Bryan Adam’s back catalogue and the beachtowel I was under was turquoise), I witnessed a child born of a fashion war.

She was dressed in black shiny lycra leggings with a short cream cropped top, with high heeled, peep toe boots.  Her hair fell as straight as water from Niagra Falls and her make up made her face take on a strange sheen.  Anyone educated in Britan during the eighties was probably made to watch the ‘Look and Read’ series.  In which case, you may have seen ‘The Boy from Space ‘ (indeed how could you forget it, so brilliant and strange it was) – that is the only way I can describe the pallour she achieved.  She had inked in a severe pair of eyebrows and a thick battalion of eyelashes to keep any enquirers at a safe distance. She was walking past a Greggs’ when i saw her.

Listen, I don’t really give a shit what anyone wears.  In fact, being such a fashion scaredy cat, I admire anyone who makes considered effort to express themselves through clothes and then has the chutzpah to ‘style it out’.  But at least enjoy it!  I went to Goldsmiths College, where people regularly dressed as sculpures or magic eye posters, but they owned it; they wanted to talk about the way they looked and what it meant.  More often than not, they dressed like that because it made them happy.  On the other hand,  this girl looked scared, defensive, hostile.  She had made incredible effort to be noticed for her choices but her attitude was so withdrawn and blocked that I felt sorry for her.  Also, she looked in pain; not in that carefree ‘ oh well my feet are going to kill me tomorrow but for tonight I’m going to knock em dead’ sort of way.  This was midday on a Saturday on a day as cold as a well-digger’s ass, where everyone around her was dressed in normal waffley stuff, like fleeces and scarves.  She was wincing, but covering her pain with defiance; don’t look at me, don’t talk to me, don’t anything.  How had she arrived at that kind of fashion?

Fashion is inevitable, because society says that we have to wear clothes, and to choose clothes, we have to make choices, whether fashionable or not.  Why make the choice to be in pain and then not even enjoy the effect you create, or have a damn good time looking the way you do?  I know that I sound as if I am hobbling ever forward on my Zimmer Frame towards a sensible seniority, but I don’t remember fashion being like this when I was a lass.  Even punk was aggressively, flamboyantly playful, not self-consciously agonising.

Please, young ladies and gentleman, wear weird stuff.  We all did it, at least once.  And it gives older people the opportunity to laugh with you (not at you; it reminds us, joyfully, of our own teenage wardrobe malfunctions).  But please, embrace it; do it with a smile.  Too soon you will feel the horrifying warmth of fleece and know that your time in lycra leggings was too brief and you will regret not spending it with a smile on your face.

Inside Out

I’m playing fast and loose with the Daily Prompt today: although I’m only on day 7 of my blog-quest, perhaps a near week of work has led to the well of inspiration running dry.  But, just to be original I’m going to write about being on the inside, imagining the outside.

 

For a teacher, I’m an insubordinate old shrew.  I spend most of my day telling students what to do and expecting them to follow my orders.  A memorable dialogue from today went like this:

HIM: Miss, can I go to the toilet?

ME:  No.

HIM:  But I need to go!

ME:  Well, DON’T need to go!

Do I think I am King Canute, ordering back the tide?  No, I just know my students very well and the odds of this student felling nature call just as they are about to start an exam were highly unlikely.  And I’m bossy.

 

So I’m all for subversion outside of the classroom: a stickler for rules if I’m setting them, but following them?  Me, not so much.  For instance, I find the suggestion of someone telling me to relax utterly ridiculous.  How am I supposed to relax?  The mere implication that you need to tell me to do so infers that I am not relaxed, and probably with good reason!  Likewise, I find the process of meditating incredibly difficult: as soon as the voice intones that famous phrase ‘ connect with your breath, feel it’s natural rise and fall’, I find myself going through an artificial construct of breathing, forcing the air in and out of my lungs like a hand operated bellow, or, worse still, trying so hard to make my breathing natural that I ……eventually …stop ……breathing …altogether.  By this point, any thoughts of connectnig with breath, a genuinely natural occurence when I’m not thinking about it, are out of the window, and I sit up, scratch my head and open a book instead.

So, relaxation on command is not for me.  Particularly arduous are trips to the masseuse; as soon as I hear ambient music in a candle-lit chamber I know that it is an exercise in futility.  I spend the next 30 minutes urging myself to enjoy this indulgence but inevitably spend it worrying if I left the hob on or if the masseuse actually fancies me, because that last stroke was a little too friendly.  I often come out with more tension than I went in with, and have to feign gratitude at the end, barely making eye contact.

 

What a horrible person.  But how can I relax when you tell me to?

 

Fortunately I have found the antidote, and that is to seek out he opposite of relaxation for any therapeutic treatments.  I have had acupuncture on and off for years, with varying degrees of success.  Needless to say, the mesmeric, ‘ you will relax you will relax you will relax’ style does nothing for me, but my current practicioners is a minor miracle.  The sessions take place in an open fronted shop in Manchester’s Arndale Centre, which is a huge shopping mall, if you’ve never been there.  The Acupuncturists is between the sliding doors onto the High Street and a Milk Shake Bar.  Sessions take place in small cubicles with no noise insulation and everyone who works there is always shouting.  Always.  The noise of the traffic of gobby Mancunian shoppers (ususally kids screaming, laughter, someone having an argument on the phone) competes with the Techno music from next door and the shouting of the acupuncturists.  Did I mention that?  Because the cubicles aren’t insulated, you can hear the outline of everyone else’s ailments in consultation (one patient was requesting treatment to recover from a skipping injury, I kid you not).  The final harmony line is the clinic’s own choice of music, pumped in through a stereo; they tend to favour Mandarin versions of popular tunes, such as ‘Baby’ by Justin Beiber or ‘Poker Face’ by Lady Gaga. To complete the full sensory experience, I lay under what may or may not be someone’s beach towel for half an hour with pins stuck in my head.

 

This, dear reader, produces the most relaxing half hour of my week – more often than not I fall into a blissful half sleep, and wake, dry mouthed and groggy only when my doctor is applying the cups.  I walk out as if on air.  I dance home.  Then I lie down again and fall to slumber.  The only time I relax is when the odds are against me; when fate and geography and other people and beachtowels conspire against what normal people would want in a fulfilling de-stress. But I think in order to relax, I need to feel close to life; in my cubicle I am protected yet so near to a lot of competing activity, and it’s here that I find the most satisfying repose.

 

But that’s just a theory.  Like I said, I’m an insubordinate old shrew.