If you had to come up with a list of 100 adjectives to describe me, I don’t think the epithet “well-groomed” would even flit across your mind for a moment. Many of the Jewish women in our part of north London (not in the frum bit; we’re in the bit next to that: fewer sheitels and more chi-chi handbags) have manicured nails, straightened hair and designer sunglasses. In comparison, it would be fair to describe my look as “unpolished”. My hair could reasonably be labelled “free-range”: unless constrained by clips, it has an intriguing tendency to quest out sideways from my head as if in search of new realms to explore. My clothes are comfortable but not especially stylish (teenage son leans over laptop at this point to interrupt with an important announcement: “You should put: ‘not at all stylish’”. Thanks for that.) My fingernails are serviceable — clean and short but unpainted.
I’ve never been a devotee of beauty treatments. The first time I ever had a facial, it was the week before I got married and I was 38 (yes, that is quite old to get married for the first time — thank you for noticing). Before lockdown, my salon visits were limited to pedicures and sporadic eyebrow and chin threading — sporadic not because I couldn’t easily audition for Wolf-Man but because it’s really painful. At the salon I used to go to for threading, they’d have a line of seated women having parts of their faces defuzzed. I was the only one with tears streaming down my face, while everyone else just sat there impassively, as if watching a boring film.
The only treatment I like is a pedicure. I used to do my own toenails but age and arthritis happeneth to us all and it’s getting harder to reach my toes while also keeping a steady hand.
I now use a local family-run salon and when I arrive, I see they have installed a clear screen at the desk. Tick. The woman doing my pedi is wearing mask, visor, and gloves — tick, tick, tick — so I’m happy (husband Larry says I’m wasted as a writer and that I should be a government inspector as I’m unnervingly vigilant about spotting lapses in corona rules). Less impressive is the stripy tape they have put on the floor to mark their “one-way system”. That might work in a supermarket where there are aisles, but in a small salon, which narrows as it goes towards the back, they’ve had to put the tape IN arrow and the tape OUT arrow adjacent to each other, barely a few inches apart, so it looks like some strange new version of Twister, where you might be attempting to come in and go out at the same time.
Still, my toes look so nice afterwards, nails pink and pretty and heels denuded of their lockdown reptilian scaly skin, that Larry suggests we go out for supper. We’ve had a debut meal out the previous week, so I am (almost) relaxed about the prospect.
When we arrive, a “greeter” wearing a visor ticks off our name and beckons a waitress. The staff have custom-made masks printed with the name of the gastro-pub, but this waitress is wearing hers in a way that seems to be the fashionable norm now — tucked beneath her nose. You don’t need to be an epidemiologist to understand that a mask must cover both nose and mouth to have any degree of efficacy. We are shown to our table, then our waiter appears. He, too, has his mask tugged down beneath his nose. I ask Larry if I should say something and he says no and urges me to have a drink. Then I look round and realise every single waiter, except one, has the mask beneath their nose instead of well up over the bridge, where it should be.
Gradually, aided only by the atmosphere and a Bellini, I start to unwind and switch off from Mask Monitor mode and into something more like a normal person, and we turn to our usual pleasure when eating out — observing other diners. Our favourites are: couples both on their phones rather than talking to each other (why not stay at home and order a take-away?); men with terrible toupées that have clearly just been deposited on the top of their heads by a passing alien craft and bear no relationship to their head, underlying hair colour etc; people in the middle of having an argument (actually, that one is usually us…), and so on.
“The man at the next table,” says Larry at his usual volume, as if trying to hail the attention of a passing ship during a thunderstorm (I have explained that, when gossiping about people in public, one should whisper and be discreet, but these are not notions he understands), jerking his head extremely noticeably in that direction, “…the one in the red shirt, is clearly an alcoholic”.
“Sssh!” I twist subtly, as if I am not being nosy but merely turning to look beyond to the canal.
I catch the people at the next table giving us the once-over and tell myself they are not commenting on my free-range hair or my Wolf-Man eyebrows. Clearly, they are merely admiring my delightful feet.
Claire Calman’s latest novel, Growing Up for Beginners, is out now.
