LOVE THAT RED

 

I've been simply mesmerized in a vast collection of photos lately---mostly old ones, for another blog subject to come in its time, and in re-reading a friend's blog this morning, I was so caught  up in his story of a staid English uncle so enamoured of a lady that he caught a train from London to Scotland in 1928, simply to have luncheon with her.   If anything came of their romance, my friend never knew, but Uncle DID buy a house near her, and lived out his long life in the Highlands, leaving behind an enormous English country house and great rooms of furniture, which his family inherited.

The atmosphere of that Perhaps Love Affair was palpable in his words, for he writes exquisitely of beautiful things and people and times, that I could see the haze of smoke in their air, the scent of Winter-long furs and Toujours Moi and dustings of face powder, with a little rim of unblotted lipstick on the unfiltered cigarette paper left in the ashtray.

 

It so reminded me of some of the women in my own family, whose great presences were punctuated by scents and colours---good perfume and wafts of Coty powder, and one Aunt whose lipstick fascinated me so as a child and teen, I could scarcely look her in the eyes, for staring at the odd configuration of her bright lips:

 

(from my own blog---a memory from a far time, published several years ago):   Her red nail polish matched her lipstick, which was put on with the oddest little down-strokes side-by-side in the middle, higher than her own lipline, then by doing a big old theater-mask-mouth which stretched her bottom lip TIGHT while she did a corner-to-corner Revlon swoop (Love That Red). That lip totally covered, she bit them tight together, transferring a coat to the top lip. The original two little pointy places right in the middle stood brightly high like the tops of angel-wings, their line of demarcation flowing into the flat dryness of a sifty layer of Coty powder which clung to the downy hairs of her upper lip.

She was the Aunt of the Purse Peke, a perfect canine armful of happy spun-gold and exuberant licks, and the longtime owner of a monkey which reached his demise by the Winter-time perch around a floor lamp which slowly decimated his tail and thus he went.   She was also loving Sister-in-Law to her husband's two "afflicted" brothers---the term of those days to convey an unfortunate condition, usually from birth.  They were both handicapped, and she was a true, helpful, uplifting Sister.  And her "other" sideline which got her and her husband talked about and into the calaboose---perhaps moire non, when more mature subjects are discussed.