Rocking the New Black

Freckles, I am reliably informed, are the New Black.

Usually, when something is deemed the New Black, I run a mile in the opposite direction, but now, this time, I’m embracing the latest New Black.

The reason, of course, is I have a vested interest here. Or rather several million vested interests. I have freckles. They began on my nose, spread to my arms and shoulders and now inhabit my legs too.

When I was little and my hair was orange, my skin was white and my freckles matched my hair. I started not to like my freckles. Then I was taken to a variety show at the Swan Theatre in Worcester. There was a comedian and, it is exceedingly un-politically correct to say this, but you’ll see later exactly why I need to make it clear, the comedian involved was black.

Now I can't remember much about his act, apart from a really unsavoury joke about three nuns in the desert. I can’t recall the details, I was very young at the time, but for some reason in the joke the nuns all needed to wee on some flour – don’t ask – but the third nun (called - toe-curlingly embarrassingly – Margaret) farted and blew the flour away. That was the punch line. How we laughed.

Anyway, for want of resuscitation, for surely he was dying up there, he spied me and said something along the lines of: “Hello freckle-face, you’re going to look like me when you grow up and those all join up.”

How the audience roared.

Bastard.

The rest of the evening passed in a blur. So I was going to grow up into a black man? With brown skin? And fuzzy hair?

I examined my face in the mirror and searched fearfully for tell-tale signs of joining up freckles. Every time we went out I scoured the faces of old people searching, searching for an old person with freckles.

Then I found her.

She was standing in Greaves Butchers in Studley.

She was tall.

She had long-red hair down beyond her waist.

She was covered – head to toe – in freckles.

She was old – at least 25.

She was beautiful.

Quite the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. An old woman with freckles. I was saved! It wasn’t true.

I gazed at this beauty in wonderment while Mum bought half a pound of mince and four pork chops.

As Mum dragged me away I cast my gaze back to the freckly beauty as she laughed and smiled at the butcher.

What a relief!


Now, thanks to Lindsay Lohan (above) on the front of Vanity Fair and Karen Elson on Vogue’s September cover, freckles are being hailed as the New Black.

For once, and possibly only for the briefest moment, I’m in fashion and I am (as Gok would say) rocking the New Black.