It’s probably haram to quote Cecil Rhodes these days, but he was bang on when he said: ‘Remember that you are an Englishman, and have subsequently drawn the greatest prize in the lottery of life.’
We’ve had peak property, peak journalism, peak publishing, peak medicine, peak travel, peak coffee
Even as a mere Englishwoman, I’ve had the best of everything (hence this unapologetically smug column). A childhood free-ranging across three countries; the best education money could buy (almost as good as a boy’s); Oxford; first job at the FT… I won’t continue to tweet out my CV, but as my cohort should concur: we’ve had peak property (our houses have probably made more money over our lifetime than we have), peak journalism (our papers used to print in the millions, now they’re mainly online), peak publishing (my first book sold for megabucks, now as a white Zionist terf I doubt I’d get a deal at all), peak medicine (the NHS is busy saving my husband’s life a second time), peak oil, peak travel, peak coffee – peak everything in fact, especially peace.
We Boomers have indeed been #blessed. When the ship goes down, I can gaze out at the briny from my seat at the captain’s table with happy acceptance as I sip my last, single-malt whisky.
Now that my gratitude journal has been completed, on to my only beef. We have put a man on the moon in my lifetime and Elon Musk is about to populate Mars with his own offspring, but it has proved impossible to bring womankind the one advance they really want: a good bra.
If men only knew how much time we have spent in search of a good bra, a search that gets harder and harder as we age. Which is why, at Sunday teatime, during the fourth named storm of the winter, my husband dropped me off in Hans Road hard by Harrods.
‘I hope they have the heavy lifting equipment ready,’ he chortled, as I hopped out for my appointment to the former corsetières to the late Queen, Messrs Rigby & Peller. At 4 p.m., I found myself topless in a hushed, curtained cubicle of the holy of holies of lingerie with Trish.
Her first question was: ‘Has Madam changed in any way since Madam was last here?’ Well, I’d last been here about 30 years ago, after my first baby, I explained. As for change, I’d just bought a couple of bras at Bravissimo, both in the size 32E. While there is less of everyone else thanks to Ozempic, there is more of me in certain places. Put it this way. If I met Gregg ‘the Veg’ Wallace today in any setting he’d tell me, staring at my chest, that you don’t get many of them to the parnd, do yer darlin’.
The reason I was in Rigby & Peller? Even the new 32Es were too tight.
I explained all this to Trish. ‘So, can you measure me?’ I asked. She was standing behind me and we were both looking into the full-length mirror at my naked torso. ‘We never measure our customers,’ she said. I’d forgotten that. One glance is enough for them to know a cup size to the last millimetre. Then she looped and strapped me into a flesh-coloured contraption and reader, I could have married her!
She explained that the PrimaDonna bra I had on had 48 different components – ‘You’re lucky if you get 12 in one from Marks & Sparks’ – and came in 69 different sizes. ‘It’s not the shoulder straps that are pulling them up,’ she said, running a finger between my flesh and the taut elastic around my ribcage, ‘and distributing the weight… it’s this band.’ As for size, Trish told me: ‘You walk into a shoe shop and say you’re a size five, but sometimes you leave in a four or a six, don’t you?’
I don’t, but I left with two bras anyway. As a public service, I feel I should pass on the wisdom of the best corsetières, which is this. Buy a new bra not every decade, but every six months or so, as they wear out after a year. Start by closing them on the last hook and eye fastening and, as the bra gives under the strain, go progressively tighter until the whole edifice is no longer fit for purpose.
My purchases were lovingly wrapped with tissue and it was only when I got home that I discovered that one was the exact same style as the bra I had bought in this very shop 30 years ago, only in ‘caffé latte’ this time, rather than black.
Which proves my earlier point, I feel, about general lack of technological progress on the bra front entirely.
Oh yes, just as the FT prints the lunch bill for its weekend guests, I should reveal that the damage for two bras came to £187, but given how few you get to the pound these days, worth every penny.
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