Youngest Daughter followed the instructions for registering, posting and posting something else - jeez, have these people not heard of email? Then last week she received a phone call from the photographers and arranged with them to go in the next day for her experience. Oh, and by the way, the experience was for two people, did I want to go with her? Hand on heart, I didn't know it was for two when I bought it. Honest. Even if I had, I would have expected her to ask one of her friends. But she asked me. Awww.
We had to take a selection of outfits/shoes/jewellery with us, so the night before was spent frantically raiding our wardrobes. Youngest Daughter is one of those fortunate females who can wear anything, and I mean anything, and look good. She can wear a potato sack and make it look stylish. I, on the other hand, can't. Youngest Daughter picked her clothes within about half an hour. Conversations that evening about my choice of clothing went something like this:
Me: "What about this?"
YD: "Nah"
Me: "This?"
YD: "Nah"
And so on. Eventually we got to:
Me: "What about this?"
YD: " Yeah, it's alright I s'pose"
Result! A lot more of the above later and we were sorted.
Next morning we arrived at the photographers freshly showered and with clean hair as requested and met the lady (I'll call her Facepainter) who was going to do our hair and make-up. Youngest Daughter elected me to get make-up and hair done first, while she watched. It took about twenty minutes for Facepainter to apply layer after layer of creams, powder and gawd knows what else onto my face. When I looked in the mirror, I gulped. I was well and truly polyfillered. Even during my cabin crew days I never, ever put that much gunk on my face. Facepainter then did my hair - creating something with hairspray that looked, ahem, terrible.
Then it was Youngest Daughter's turn while I watched and furtively combed the hairspray out of my hair with my fingers. Firstly, the heated rollers went into her hair because Youngest Daughter wanted it wavy. Facepainter didn't spend as long applying her make-up - obviously, being younger, there was no polyfillering to do. Then the rollers came out and the hairspray was liberally applied. Youngest Daughter didn't have waves, she had big hair - and I mean BIG hair! Hair so big I had to look away.
Youngest Daughter also doesn't normally wear much make-up; she looked in the mirror and gulped. We were left to our own devices for a couple of minutes and there was much sniggering going on between us. Our make-up made me think of the Simpsons episode in which Homer has invented a make-up gun. After he's shot Marge in the face with said gun, she looks in the mirror and says, "Homer, I think it's set to whore!". Facepainter asked if we were going out that night and commented it would be a shame not to, seeing as we were facially dolled up. My thought? The only place we could go would have been Kings Cross (not that I said it out loud).
We spent the next two and a half hours being photographed by a bloke who had the charisma of a tadpole, but I think he took a bit of a shine to Youngest Daughter - she has cheekbones. Was exhausted with all the posing and changing outfits by the end of it. I don't know how people can do that for a living, good job we're all different. We arranged an appointment to view the photos and left. Wearing all that crap on our faces. All the way home. Twenty miles away. Lovely.
When we got home, the make-up came off. I'd like to say it came straight off, but it didn't. In my case, there were chisels involved and I even considered getting the pneumatic drill out of the shed. I kid you not, there really was that much on my face.
Yesterday, we had our viewing appointment back at the photographers and I have to say we looked good in our photos. Stunning in Youngest Daughter's case. My Facebook friends will get to see just how stunning both she and Eldest Daughter are when I post them on there. So I suppose all the crud on our faces was worth it. However, even after having all that stuff on my face, there's still going to be some airbrushing done on a few of my photos. How do I know? Because they told me. Pfft.
