Only Julie

Mad Irish Julie came to stay at the weekend. I was going to write a pen picture of her for the blog, a tribute to her madness and Irishness, if you like. I was going to start lots of sentences with the words “Only Julie…”, as in “only Julie could get locked in a flamingo enclosure of the local zoo after a guided tour for the diplomatic corps, and have to expose her knickers to other diplomats when climbing over the fence”, or “only Julie could blame outrageous dinner party behaviour on an overdose of cough mixture” or maybe “Only Julie would have to spend a brief but memorable period of her working life baking cakes in public as part of a department store window display”, and so on (and, believe me, there would have been lots of stories to keep me going).

Then, the day after her departure, I made a discovery in the shower! There I was, minding my own business, and washing my hair, when I spotted the dim outlines of some pots on the shower windowsill. Not wearing my glasses in the shower (for that would be foolish, dear readers), I had to lean right forward until the pots were a few centimetres from my face. Behold! Clarins pots!! One pot of day time moisturiser and one of night time cream!! I didn’t get my hopes up. I thought they must have been empties, left there by James on one of our panic house cleary-uppies prior to people coming to view (the house is for sale, you see!). So I gingerly opened one of them. Full to the brim!! Still not wanting to get my hopes up, I later asked Sally if they were hers. She looked at me and sighed: “Becky, I can’t afford Clarins”. Well, me and her both, sunshine!

Then I realised. Only Julie would realise that two pots of Clarins moisturiser are all that is needed to make an impoverished ex-student in badly-paid employment feel like a princess – a well-moisturised and age-defying princess! I love Mad Irish Julie. For not only is she Mad, and slightly Irish, but she is also a magic fairy who bestows expensive face cream upon the needy! And I didn’t realise just how needy I was until I found the treasure she had wondrously left behind...