It was that one particular wrinkle that had the most profound effect on me..I mean...there are wrinkles and there are wrinkles...
There are the wrinkles around the eyes - the 'laugh lines" they are
called...and there are the wrinkles around the mouth "lines of fortitude and strength...and there are those two deep ones alongside the nose " character lines" they are called, but no one...no one has
ever...given a name to the wrinkles on the back of ones neck...
It was all mothers fault, bless her dear departed heart.....
She was the one who told me, at the tender and impressionable age of 12, that i would never be a true beauty because the space between my
top lip and my nose was too big. One had to be able to hold a pencil there for ten seconds to be a beauty...
Now two problems arose instantly, the first I had never before thought of beauty, and the second thing was to practise with this pencil thing....
It never worked however, try as I might I could not close that dreadful gap between my top lip and my nose. But that was not all, once the glaring deficiencies in my top lip had been revealed, my nose then
came under the spotlight. "aquiline" was mothers comment...noble, yet aquiline"
My darling brother quipped 'well its more like a roman nose..'roamin all over your face " accompanied by a great deal of brotherly loving mirth...
What made it worse was that I mistakenly looked up the word "aquifer" in the dictionary and there it was - description of my nose and I quote " a deposit of rock, such as sandstone, containing water that can be used
to supply wells"
You can imagine my consternation and concern, it was only many tears and many years later that I learnt not to confuse the words aquiline and aquifer !!
'Grecian" would have been a preferable adjective, but aquiline I ask you with tears in my eyes, who on earth needs an aquiline nose in this day and age of the coverted rosebud nose, the retrousse nose and the
up-turned nose
I used to make sure I watched every Barbara Streisand movie because her nose, as it was before the days of cosmetic surgery, made anybody's
nose look good !!
Now not being in the least bit nascisistic herself, mother was totally impervious to the effect this self dissection was having on her only daughter......
Mum had been a natural beauty, and she was the only person who was totally oblivious to this fact. When grandfather was the mine manager
in Shabani mum was crowned 'Asbestos Queen".
She and her sister
Corynne each had a regal mop of thick curly lustrous mahogany red hair.
Hair which needed but a strong comb and a weekly wash to keep it looking magnificent. All the Morton sisters needed was their loose powder compact, dabbed haphazardly across their enticing freckles,
lipstick applied without any due care and attention and off they went to conquer hearts and turn heads.
And the Morton girls had brains and brawn as well as beauty, Head Girl at Chaplin High School (the same year as Ian Smith and Aiden Diggenden), Beit
scholars, first team hockey , first team tennis, well they just had everything, those Morton twins, and they expected their daughters to have it all too.
And so cousin Tootie and I were introduced to the world of the haves and the have nots.
Our hair, inherited from these two red headed beauties, was limp and mousey and needed daily washing, blow drying and grooming. Our lives changed however when highlights were invented, and I promise to stay in
zimbabwe only as long as my stylist Mark promises to stay !!
But, I digress, back to that wrinkle on the back of the neck. After wrestling with the top lip, and the aquifer nose, I was then advised of
the Morton family preponsity towards the "double chin"....
It ran in the family, and as the Morton girls were beautiful, talented and brainy, a mere double chin was not going to be allowed to ruin the
marriage market. And so all efforts were turned towards eliminating the double chin.
Now all you have to do to avoid getting a double chin, is to roll your tongue up in your mouth, like a chameleon and touch the back of your tonsils. Do this
as often as you can during an average day, and you will so strengthen your gizzard enough to avoid suffering the embarrassing indignity of a
double chin.....
but....
What mother failed to tell me, that as fast as i was curling my
proboscis up chameleon fashion, I was throwing my neck back in an awkward fashion...and hence...mother nature's cruel twist of fate...this deep, indelible, gargantuan, wrinkle would appear on the back of my
neck....
Oh it's a cruel cruel world is it not