transretrogurl

Two days until my next session and I’ve got the nerves already. It’s mad, but I still get petrified when I have a makeover session, and my brain, in its own little odd, handbags-at-dawn kind of way rationalises away the trepidation. By planning.

For some reason drab-mode-me has to plan everything to the n-th degree, a sad little attempt to retain a modicum of masculinity, which in and of itself is humorous.

I plan the train trip, tickets *way* in advance and giving myself a good couple of hours to traverse London, a backpack with my tech life-support kit neatly prepared, a fold-away duffle-bag ready for her outfits.

Tomorrow I iron, which, as someone who has a recurring fantasy around being the housewife, I had never done until my last session. I’ll repeat that so it can sink in. I had never lifted an iron before March 2nd 2016. That’s 47 years on this earth I had managed to go without ever using one. I had to get my other half to show me how. So that’s kudos points for the trouser-wearer.

Tomorrow I need to do a little shopping, get some more shaving products. Both my shavers are already on charge, I’ve pre-done my legs (and walked eight miles today in the blistering sun, each step a nightmare of chafing). Tomorrow the arms and the top of the chest get a good seeing to, last thing tomorrow night I will close shave, but not completely, the face, and then get up at 4:00am to finish before hopping the 5:00am train to London.

See? It’s like a bloody military operation. Just to get one girl who is literally gagging to frock up across London.

In fact, the preparation, and the terror of actually ringing the doorbell (yeah, yeah, I still get the ‘if there is anyone else in the road I walk past the door of the studio and come back after they have gone’ jitters), waiting for the shakes to pass when I get there before I can pull up the stockings and sit in the make-up chair, it’s all one big highly planned mission, just so I can pose for five hours in some really retro frocks.

Is it really worth it? Hell yes. I’d walk through fire in order to totter around on leopard-print patent heels. The planning, the obsession, the spy-like way of defining a route to the studio I haven’t travelled before, it’s all part of the entree.

And when it’s over, when the last frock has been wriggled out of, when I stand, forlorn, in front of the bathroom mirror with a couple of hands full of industrial make-up remover, I look long and hard into the feminine face, a little sad, before I rub my hands briskly, the artistic work of the excellent make-up artist consigned to the plughole.

But for those brief moments, standing in front of the full length mirror, swishing my dress, loving the fact that it is *my* dress, posing, blowing kisses at the girl in the mirror, it’s worth the agony, the planning, the obsession. It’s like a long cool drink of rose-tinted water in a desert of masculine cut trousers. I wouldn’t be without it.

Stay beautiful, you wonderful people. Catch you on the flip side when Sarah will have a load of new looks to play with.