Fakery

I'm a huge aficianado of fake eyelashes. I love the way they give my eyes an almond shaped sexiness, helping them look huge in photographs. I'm a dab hand at putting them on, and recommend Eylure's style 101 lashes for a look so natural that no one can spot them. You also need a steady hand, clear glue in a proper tube (not the ickle glass phials that come with lashes), and those small travel size tweezers that let you get in close when you are positioning them.

Unfortunately they should only really be worn by women who are meticulous about their appearance, and who are fond of taking furtive peeps in their hand looking-glasses*. Whilst I will spend maybe fifteen minutes applying slap, once I'm out of the house I rarely check my face in a mirror.

This is a mistake. Twice now a strip of fake lashes has parted company with my eyelid in a public place, and I have failed to notice. The first time I had cycled madly down Greenwich Avenue to Employees Only (a proper old-school cocktail haunt) for a blind date. I chained up my wheels round the corner, whipped my heels out of the bike basket, applied some lipstick blind, and sauntered gracefully over to my date who was leaning against a tree outside the entrance. We shook hands. He then stared at me, hard. Great, I thought. He's overcome by my flushed cheeks and radiant beauty. But no. One of my false lashes was hanging by a fibre from the corner of my eye.

But at least he told me.

Second time I was fooling around, fully dressed, in bed with a preppy New Yorker. After a while, I de-suctioned myself, as I felt something brush against my cheek. Yup. My lash was dangling from my eyelid again. Oh yes, preppy banker said, that's been like that for a while.

Gah.

* Apologies to Nancy Mitford