My Tweezers

Tweezers are a cruel master.

They have the power to make me look presentable, or to send me out into the world looking like an utter gobshite.

They even look dangerous.  Pointy, if they’re to be any use, or at least that’s been my experience.  And quite shiny, usually.  Sitting there, at the bottom of my makeup bag, twinkling at me, trying to entice me into their web of pain and torment.

I know what will happen if I allow myself to be tempted by their twinkle.  I’ll end up in agony for the night, and looking bonkers for weeks.  I’m leaving it to the professionals.  It’s faster, easier, equally painful, in fairness.  But somehow I’d rather pay someone else to hurt me than do it myself for nothing.

God knows, those tweezers are always at the top of my “How to Save Money” list.  When the overdraft is high and morale is low, I always decide that I’ll colour my own hair and shape my own eyebrows.

But before I’m paid again I’m using my overdraft for dying and waxing – who has the patience for all that plucking and shaping?  Seriously, who?  I know I’m an eejit and a wastrel and a spendthrift, but Christ Almighty, I have to put some value on my time too. 

And the eyebrow caper is always the same.  I start with the best of intentions.  I always do the right eye first, because I’m left handed, so it’s easier.

After what feels like hours of poking and tormenting myself, I look awful.  Red, shiny and painful.  Or like my lovely Dad used to say,

“with a head like a turkey cock’s”.

I presume boy turkeys are red of face, I don’t know, I’ve never met one.  If not, Dad might have been commenting on my surfeit of chins.

But I’m not going to focus on that possibility.

After the first eye, I have a break.  I have a cup of coffee, trying to ignore the stinging, pinched feeling all around my eyebrow.  It usually takes at least two cigarettes to get me back on my feet.  Gingerly, I approach the mirror.

I always hope that the major clean up operation I’ve done on one eyebrow will somehow, miraculously, make the second one look better.

Obviously it doesn’t.

I just look like the local maniac.

I have to hack away at the second eyebrow, in order that I might be able to leave the house in the morning.

And by now I’ll have lost all morale for the job.  I start thinking of ways to make up the money for the eyebrow waxing.  If we started drinking black coffee, for instance, we could stop buying milk.  Surely that would free up the price of a treatment every three weeks or so?  His Nibs isn’t keen.

Maybe we could cut back on the dog food.  Neither his Nibs nor the dogs seem keen on that idea.

Of course I could give up the cigarettes, that would save enough to bring the beautician to my house every Saturday and give me all treatments I want and a full massage I’d say.  But not yet, I’m not ready yet.  If I’d been able to see into the future when I had my first cigarette, and known that one day I’d consider giving up buying milk instead of cigarettes, I might have thought twice.

I have awful eyebrows.  They’re fine when they’re done, of course, but left to their own devices they sprawl like ivy in every direction.  They’re really dark and there’s no way you could miss them.  My sister and sister in law both have very fair eyebrows, I think they actually have to fill them in with those eyebrow pencils – possibly the only kind of makeup I’ve never ever bought in my life.  They always say how my eyebrows are lovely and strong and a feature of their own.  Yes, they are, I suppose.  But they’re also strong when I’m standing in front of the mirror  trying to pull them out, and my skin stretches so far off my forehead that it visibly pings back into place like something from Tom and Jerry when I finally pluck a hair out.

Bloody tweezers.  They’re only used when I’m both horrendous looking and broke.  No wonder I hate them.