Hilarie: Everyone’s a winner in catwalk celebration

Sep 26 2009 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

1
2
next

THOSE of you who own a teenager will be familiar with the use of the word ‘fail’, as in the commonly-uttered phrase ‘that’s an epic fail.’

I’m told by considerably younger colleagues this is an American affectation.

Together with expressions such as ‘shut up’ (meaning ‘fancy that’ or ‘get away with you’) and ‘bad’ or ‘sick’ (‘good’), it forms part of a language that fully-fledged adults find puzzling which is how it should be.

And woe betide the grown-up who tries to join in, because anyone old enough to be paying utility bills will, inevitably, discover that they are an embarrassing ‘pile of fail’.

I am frequently described in such terms by Firstborn, not because I can’t do teenspeak (I don’t go there) but because I fail in so many other ways, mainly to do with being inept, disorganised and clumsy.

Because of my ‘total fail’ at washing up we don’t have a single complete set of glasses in the house. My scarred knees – both of them – dislocated ring finger, chipped elbow bone and broken toe bear testament to the fact that I’m also a ‘fail’ at walking upright.

Our new dining table, fabricated from highly-polished mango wood and treasured by the Man-in-Charge, has a large chip in the centre from when I dropped a water jug on it. In fact, there’s not a room in our house that doesn’t have some sign of ‘fail’ inflicted by me. I won’t even start on the contents of my wardrobe other than to briefly mention the red wine stains, torn hems and incident of the indelible marker.

Yes, I’m a total ‘fail’. And not, said the Man-in-Charge, the sort of person that anyone organising a fashion show would want to have on the catwalk or handling haute couture.

“You’ll fall off. Or over,” he predicted, when I told him that I’d been invited to take part in the annual Breast Cancer Fashion Show, organised by the breast care nurses who look after patients in Calderdale and Huddersfield.

I did what I usually do and ignored the negativity.

“You should look at YouTube,” said The Boy, helpfully, “there are loads of catwalk fails on that.”

I thought it best that I didn’t. Nor did I check out the catwalk fails on www.epicfail.com or any of the other websites dedicated to ‘fail’ in all its many forms.