Lipstick blues and hues

I'm sure it's a cliche by now, but honestly, these days I'm finding that shopping for the right lipstick more frustrating than rush hour traffic. I remember the good old days where I seemed to be able to slap on anything, including the iciest pink going (rebel school day phase I'm not sure I ever pulled off) which looked as though I may have been lacking in an ever so vital thing called oxygen. Yet somehow, when I looked in the mirror things actually seemed to be ok. Or maybe it was my very unwise outlook. I'm not sure.

  These days, take today for instance, I'm wandering aimlessly around Boots and M&S make-up sections, looking for the right shade of nude that I can wear everyday. Trouble is, deep down, I'm really looking for a pink, nothing like the arctic shade I wore in the invincible days, but something that makes me look, well -pretty-er. Something that actually does something for me. Yet all I seem to be finding is hues so illuminous that I find myself questioning how many more hen nights I might attend in my life and whether they will still require the tutu skirt that is shamelessly shoved somewhere in the back of my bag drawer. Then there's the reds. Oh the mean reds. They don't offer me much more dignity. All they do is echo the voice of a condescending old biddy, "wash that muck off your face immediately." I'm not even going to aproach the plums, they seem to descend me into a gothic, Satan-worshipping university student every time.


  Which always seems to leave the pinks and the nudes, and the coral colours that fall somewhere amongst the pinks. This is where I am stuck. I need a pink that is shimmery, girly, but not too bright, not too aging. Coral does ok for me on an evening out. But the perfect daytime lippy remains elusive to me.

Or maybe I'm just too fussy and should go sit myself down in a Clinique chair and let a very glamourous woman set things on the straight and narrow, before I go off the rails and give in to another "frosty rose" version. For now though, I remain undecided.