Thursday 15 October 2009

A Power Lunch with Chanel No. 5

Two pale, fraught and overworked women sit opposite one another in a café, on Holloway Road. They have exactly 45 minutes to share the last six weeks of their lives with one another. This is the power lunch, except that neither woman is particularly powerful and there isn’t a lot of lunch involved. It’s a bit like a supermodel lunch: just caffeine and chit chat and two women who look fucked.

Over the years, my much-loved friend, Chanel No. 5 , has become an expert on welcoming babies into the world. She turns up on your doorstep with some exquisite edibles, fixes her face into a grin (look closely and you’ll find fear) and prays that you won’t make her hold the baby. She’s practiced and perfected this duty countless times and always leaves thanking her lucky stars that she is childless and can spend her money on those Chloe boots instead. This is her latest baby faux pas.

Chanel No. 5 turns up on her friend’s doorstep on one of her ‘Hi nice to meet your baby’ visits. Her friend actually had her son 6 months ago, so you could say that Chanel No. 5 hasn’t exactly been eager to meet the new arrival. Grandmother opens the door, in rapture, cradling a very small child and Chanel No. 5 says, in an immaculately conceived, great opening line,


“Hi! Is that it?”

Surprised, grandmother responds,

“This is my other grandchild. She’s a girl and she’s two weeks’ old.”

“Oh, is that different then?” says Chanel No. 5.

It’s fair to say that a woman who can’t tell the difference between a six month old boy and a two week old girl, dressed respectively in blue and pink, should probably not consider having children. Instead she should stick to what she’s best at, which is shopping, and cute tips like this.

2 comments:

  1. He he, I had a friend like that, she now is a mum too and has just recently confessed that she might try for a second. This is a massive improvement from someone who wouldn't look at babies just in case they magically duplicate and she would have to keep one!

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  2. I know people like that--baby haters. Yeah, they definitely should not have babies.

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