A ponytail comes of age

I haven't yet tangoed through a summer, so it's a very recent discovery that, even in a climate as untropical as Wellington's, if you have 50 people dancing in close embrace on a small floor, the temperature fast goes through the roof. Mine, anyway. Right now this feels like as big a challenge as was learning to dance backwards in high heels at the beginning of the year.
As a general rule, I don't sweat. I wish I did - it might slow down the overheating process. But get me clamped (however nicely) in someone's arms, with the right side of my face against their head, and we're almost instantaneously glued together.
Men, by and large, do sweat. Plus, as leaders, they must work damn hard. So, after one tanda, I leave the floor with my hair plastered to my scalp, and my face damp, and an unbecoming scarlet.
Longish hair is therefore a problem. Last Sunday, P paused, mid-dance, and plucked some of mine from the region of his mouth. I didn't feel great about this, so last night I pulled it back into a ponytail. Which is cooler for me, too, since it isn't hanging down my back.
It's ... um, a very long time indeed since I publicly accompanied a ponytail. From babyhood, my hair was chopped to just below ear-level, parted on the left and the right captured in a ribbon. The classic 50s girl-child look.
Then, one day when I was about seven or eight and was going to the church fete, my mother announced that my hair was long enough for pigtails. With a degree of pulling and pinching, she managed to scrap it into two stubs and secure them with rubber bands (that's right - scrunchies had yet to be invented). She called my father to admire them, as I stared awestruck into the mirror above the fireplace.

From then on we were growing my hair. (If you knew my mother, you would understand that she was commander-in-chief of this project while I was a mere foot solider.) I progressed through plaits, and then, after intensive lobbying, was finally - around the age of 10 or 11 - allowed to graduate to a ponytail.

Sadly, it was by then too late for one of those perky little numbers so beloved of 50s girls. My hair was too long and straight and heavy.

I would lie on my back over the edge of the bed so that head and hair hung nearly to the floor, then, as if taking my hair by surprise, could corral it all into the rubber band. I would get to my feet convinced that this time I had done it - got my ponytail to bounce on the top of my head. But within minutes it had slipped from ponytailness to horsetailness.
I came to hate it, and my thirteenth birthday present was being given permission to have it cut off. But that's another story.
One of things I hated back then, apart from lack of ponytail perkiness, which was closely correlated with popularity, was that girls sat behind me in class playing with it and boys whizzed by in the corridors and playground and pulled it. Both, from a position of rock-bottom self-esteem, I interpreted as a subtle form of disdain, if not downright mockery.
How lovely it is to grow up! Last night at the milonga two boys pulled my ponytail and not for a second did I think that meant they hated me.

Bags of bags

Until a few years ago I had one bag at a time. For those who think they must have misunderstood, I'll explain. I bought a bag, used it day in day out, sometimes for years, until it became too shabby or worn to tolerate, then I threw it out and bought another. And so on.

Seems weird now, even to me.

Said bags were capacious, neutrally coloured and/or vaguely ethnic, and had either one shoulder strap or two ie they were backpacks. I've been particularly fond of Hedgren bags. I didn't do handbags. Handbags reminded me of my mother, Mrs Thatcher and the Queen, who all wore gloves and carried handbags that matched their shoes. And who, incidentally, all had the same hair do:

Then, about five years ago, I bought a bag I didn't actually need, imagining I was putting it aside for when I would. A bag explosion followed.  I now change bags so often that, last time I was in Melbourne, S and I went hunting for bag organisers - plain, functional inserts with lots of sections, which can lifted out of one bag and plonked into the next, with minimum inconvenience to the owner. It works, up to a point.

I hasten to add that even now I'm no bag queen. I don't spend big money on them, and that's in good part because I don't see the point - they don't give me enough pleasure. Linda Grant's blog stands by the principle that "A good handbag makes the outfit", and when she says "good", she means expensive and designery - a real production. This sort of thing, for instance, which I grabbed at random off the net, and which is actually one of the less exhibitionist of the type. 

If you're connoisseur enough to see that it isn't designery at all, but just some nasty faux piece of plastic, you've made my point for me. I haven't a clue. It's just that this sort of pastel-coloured thing bedevilled with zips and bling and whatnot, does nothing for me at all, whether it's designed by Chanel or sold on a Hong Kong street. 

I do like leather, I must say. And, always my mother's daughter, will invariably pick up any bag (or shoe or glove) claiming to be leather, and give it a investigative sniff. The Shonk Test, Mum used to call it, and she also applied it to good effect on bottles of milk of questionable freshness. But these days, it doesn't matter as much if things aren't leather. One of my favourite bags is a wonderful green that doesn't even bother to pretend to be the real thing. There is no real thing anymore, is there? This is the post-modern era.

But - and now we get to the point - here is my latest bag purchase, an item my younger self would have regarded with derision. Indeed, I own nothing else like it. But The Wedding is coming up, and I was aware that I had nothing remotely suitable for accompanying a posh frock in which to carry a lipstick, a hairbrush and some money. I still nurse doubts about quite how to carry it and suspect I'll try to slip it over one shoulder to avoid holding it by its chain. I can't bear the idea of looking dinky.  

It's beautifully pleated black satin, with nicely understated hardware. The only other thing I'm going to tell you about it is that it cost $15.