It’s been awfully cold recently. Yesterday I had to face freezing fog in order to take Matty on an emergency run to locate missing medication. Those damn fools at the Health Centre had forgotten to order her sleeping pills and she’d endured two sleepless nights. Never mind that on the coldest night of the winter she turned off the central heating and popped off to bed at 8.30pm as is her habit then shivered the whole night through. Never mind that her sleeping tablets barely contain enough dope to send a kitten to sleep but that she feels she needs them anyway. You can get addicted to placebos y’know.
My spoken advice – stay up later, keep the heating on longer, buy an electric blanket.
My unspoken advice – take to the drink, smoke dope, chill…
It was still awfully cold so while I waited for Matty to pile on the going out layers and have a bit of a dither I started reading this story about street prostitution in Belfast. Being a country woman I don’t get to see many street prostitutes although there is supposed to be a brothel in Spide City quite near to where I work. I’m told that the ladies who work there look like any other ordinary housewife you might see in a fruit & veg shop. Through my work I’ve met a few women who’ve worked in the sex trade and by far one of the most ‘successful’ ie, lifetime career rather than brief foray, looked like the sort of neat and pleasant wee woman you’d see working in a provincial accountant’s office.
But still I imagine that street hookers would present a more glamorous image. That fishnet stockings, high boots, low tops and short skirts kind of thing. But it has been awfully cold recently. The Sunday Life had a picture of a group of some of the women ‘plying their trade’. Not a fishnet to be seen! Instead they were, to a woman, wearing trainers, heavy denim jeans, big jumpers and padded jackets. Each and every girl had a money bag round her waist of the kind that look like little aprons. They looked far more like a convention of market traders than a group of hookers. So is this normal? Or is it just the weather? Or is it a Belfast thing?
I promise I won’t make assumptions about anyone who comments on this post.
3 comments:
Have I related the i-was-on-national-news-as-a-hooker story here? Probably, one of my faves.
Well, see, there was a brothel beside what where I lived and all, but, asperitions will be cast, so no more.
Tell ya in Feb though!
I'm looking forward to being regaled with that story.
I'm not a hooker, but I played one in Community Theater. I played an 82-year-old working hooker in a play called "The Oldest Profession." It was about a group of aged ladies of the evening, still plying their trade, growing old with their customers. It was an interesting and seemingly honest look at life on the fringe of society.
And no fishnets in the lot!
Post a Comment