Keeping it together

A PAIR of tweezers is the most important item a woman of a certain age packs on holidays.

THE most important item a woman of a certain age packs on holidays? And by that I'm talking 30s perhaps, definitely 40s, maybe even 20s. A little crucial something that few blokes in their lives will ever even clock? Tweezers.

Not just for eyebrows but, oh, many other nooks and crannies and vast exposed plains that... let’s not go there. 
Which leads me to: glamvenience. Those lovely little circuit-breakers in the great cram of life; and as a working mother who often feels like she’s failing in thousands of tiny ways, I’m all for them.

A sparkly glamvenience in the recent London life? The department store threading bar, where a wonderful Muslim woman would wield her thread with fingers like knitting needles and pluck my eyebrows into a shape as beautiful as the trail of a falling star, tidying up anything else she could see in the process. I felt restored, because I tell you the eyebrows are starting to go off-piste; some willfully grey, others thickly curled, and when plucked at home there’s likely to be – good grief – a sudden, rogue, bald patch.

Other glamveniences I’d like imported to my neighbourhood right away: Ikea online. Thus avoiding the store entirely. Because the chap and I almost divorced in its aisles once; actually, we almost divorced in the carpark before we got to the aisles.

Topshop To Go. A clothes van would rock up at your home where a gaggle of girlfriends would await; the Tupperware party of modern glamvenience. Mobile computer technicians. Arrive by moped, fix on the spot. Photobox. A cheap digital printing website packaging up photos that make you feel like a pro as you unveil them. Nit salons. Because in London I assumed that headlice was some odd throwback to Dickensian street urchins unique to a city cracking and groaning under the weight of its population.

My new life in Oz? A nit comb, in readiness, at almost every sink. And as older parents – how on earth do you see the little blighters? The eyesight’s failing at a crucial time in our parenthood; we need all the help we can get. Deliverance. A kitchen that delivers restaurant-quality takeaway from all manner of cultures and Housebites, a website that commissions the nation’s best chefs to cook just for you, cut price, and then delivers.

Oh for those latter two! Because right now I’m feeling like the only one in our MasterChef-obsessed land who doesn’t know how to magic up a soufflé. The splendid dinner parties since arrival – delicious, yes, but everything is so opulent that asking the hosts to one of our own mortifyingly basic kitchen experiences feels far too terrifying. When an old schoolmate said “Come for dinner, we’ll do takeaway fish and chips” we were so relieved we made her a godmother.

Now I know that a lot of these glamveniences are a ridiculously indulgent remedy for those swamping moments of drowning-in-busyness endured by the more pathetic modern types like myself; but sometimes they rescue.

Example: My daughter’s recent running carnival. After a morning of dashing all over the place and never quite catching up to where I was meant to be, I staggered onto the playing field, juggling baby capsule and picnic basket. Just as it was ending. Got the time completely wrong. And my girl needs me more than ever right now as she’s feeling hugely unsettled by a new baby. The first person I bump into? The crisply-together headmistress. A bemused look on her face. My eyes smarted behind the sunglasses; I could have wept in front of her. I took a photo of my girl, biting my lip to stop the tears flowing. At that moment it felt like the great edifice of calm and control was crumbling all around me – I was crying out silently for all the gods of glamvenience to get me through – but there was no one in sight.

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