I'm looking at a teaser for next month's edition of a well-known woman's magazine. It features a woman in festive yet elegant dress. She's running away from the camera, laughing gaily and (key ingredients, here) tugging a bunch of helium-filled balloons and looking back over her shoulder. It could be worse, she could be prancing over a bridge with a crisp-yet-sunshiny London skyline in the background. They often are.
So, who is this woman? All I know is, she's not me. She could be me. After all, we probably live in the same city, possibly share the same social demographic, and are definitely the same age (I know because the publishers tell me so). So why, while she spent yesterday tra-la-la-tripping over London bridges in a ballgown, then went home to prepare a 'lazy' kitchen supper for her husband and the woman who once seduced her husband (this is what she does, the front cover said so...but it's ok, they're best friends now) did I spend mine stealing a small stuffed cat from a celebrated museum shop and then went on to a shamefully cheap restaurant in East London to see whether absinthe works better when you snort it (it doesn't, and it hurts. Don't do it).
I have a job. I have nice friends. I bake cupcakes, want babies one day, and get taken to The Wolseley for breakfast on a regular basis. I reach deadlines and consult for great big corporations on matters of upmost importance (like, erm, how to market their latest lipstick). But somewhere along the line, I have come undone. I don't waft balloons across London bridges, I fill them with nitrous oxide at festivals, climb on top of camper vans and think I've momentarily melded with a greater consciousness.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. Sordid? Glorious? Slightly superior? Or just wondering where the magazines are for people like me, because I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Surely?
