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Elegant. But not in a nightie.

The annual pageant of young beauties is over for another angst-ridden year. School girls and their parents met together for a formal dinner last night; speeches were said; songs were sung; accolades were bestowed where deserved and a pleasant evening was had by all: it's calmness contrasting sharply with the heartache in the days - actually, not days - weeks! - leading up to it.

These weeks were angst-ridden in terms of the tears, frustrations, fretful social networked negotiations and parental begging that precede this event every year. Dozens of dresses discussed. Endlessly. Too long, wrong colour, wrong fabric, too clinging, too Essex, too expensive (parents coffers breath a sigh of relief. Briefly.) but never too short.Strange, I'd have thought that short and Essex perhaps were the same thing, but my knowledge of what's in and what's out is obviously limited.

Even when the dress is ordered, and miraculously arrives on time, the worry-fest is not over. "Will my friends like it? What about shoes? And tights? And - OMG - what will I do with my hair?" Then the world  ends when someone else has ordered EXACTLY THE SAME DRESS!!!! In a different colour. And with contrasting accessories, they of course look sufficiently different on the evening for no-one to notice. But try telling them that a few days ago.

The effort however was worth it - without exception they all looked elegant and older than their years. And I was proud. Which is rather different to the experience at the same dinner only a few years ago - then, the fashion was for nighties.

I remember my mother in the late sixties when Baby-dolls were the in thing for feminine nightwear. She had a pale blue set.The shorter, frillier, more shiny and nylon the better.Worn with a long flimsy gown of equally shiny and frilly and electrostatic-power-generating fabric, these must have been designed by a man with a Freudian obsession confusing little girls and motherliness. And as the saying goes what goes around comes around - at that dinner just a few years ago, baby dolls were back - short, diaphanous and revealing.  I am so glad they have gone - back to bed? Fine. Back at dinner? - not for a long while I hope.

So borrowed shoes returned, dress probably stuffed in a poly bag where it will remain until I narrowly mistake it for rubbish, and comments fluttering all over the social network in a gushy, girly sort of way - parents and their wallets can rest a while, until the next party and the next pressing need for a new dress.


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