I hope that wherever you are and whatever you are up to the world is being kind to you and you to it, and in your busy schedules if you have 500 or so words to share then let me know. You are also invited to share the blog through twitter, the more women who share wisdom the better.
with grateful thanks
Dee
Tatoos by Sophie Jonas-Hill 
‘You all know each other, don’t you?’ I’m in Chelsea Town Hall at an antique
fair, being sold a deep blue evening dress. The woman selling it had been
looking at my tattoos as if she’d just lifted up her watering can and seen an unexpected toad. Now she’s seen someone else, a hipster
looking at vintage items on the next stall, one arm tattooed shoulder to wrist.
‘Who knows each other?’ I ask.
‘You people with tattoos,’ she says.
I’m looking at myself in her mirror,
zipped into the dress with its billowing skirts. I catch her eye in the looking
glass.
‘Oh yes,’ I say. ‘We all know each other.’
‘Oh,’ she says, ‘do you?’ as if she’s a little alarmed to have her
assertions confirmed.
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it’s because of the meetings, you see.’
She’s been trying to convince me the
dress once belonged to Wallace Simpson. It didn’t, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to zip it up. It’s not even Wallace blue.
‘What meetings?’ she asks, tweaking at the back of
the gown.
‘When you get tattooed, you get onto
the list,’ I tell her. Once a year, you get the invite. You don’t have to go, but well, it’s a night out, you know?’
I don't know why I want
the dress, other than I do. It has huge skirts and smells of damp and old
perfume. I’ve no where to wear it to, other than dancing round my bedroom, but then
lets not discount that as a reason. The woman looks at the hipster as he picks
up a vintage telescope.
‘Where are the meetings held?’ she asks, leaning closer to me.
‘The New forest,’ I tell her. ‘At midnight.’
‘Midnight?’ She glances at the hipster. ‘Perhaps that’s why he wants the telescope,’ she hisses. ‘Star gazing.’
‘I expect so,’ I say. ‘What were you saying about the
dress?’
She tells me that the
story is, that Wallace Simpson came to stay at a house party at her great Aunt’s.
‘She brought five cases, five, each
full to the brim. At dinner she was being bright and charming, when suddenly
the butler came and whispered that there was a telephone call for her. She got
up and went into the hall, and everyone tried not to listen, then she simply
never came back.
‘Never came back?’
‘It was him, you know.’ The woman winks at me. ‘He called and she answered, just ran
upstairs to change and pack and was gone. But she left the dress behind, and
never sent for it.’
I imagine the dress
hanging in a closet, waiting and waiting for Wallace Simpson to no avail, jus
as the woman is imagining all us tattooed people, dancing in the New forest.
‘Is there really a secret meeting?’ she asks.
‘Is this Wallace Simpson’s dress?’ We smile at each other.
No, I didn’t buy it, but I like to think she
took the plunge. I’ll look out for her at the next meeting.
