Perfume

What’s the most profound piece of advice you’ve been given? Did you take it?

My mum left Ireland in the 50s to go work in the UK.  She was from a small rural village in Co. Meath.  She went to join her older sisters in London.  It was a live in job working in a bar/hotel.  She was 16 years old.

Having worked behind a bar myself for a good few years, starting at age 19, I came to realise you see the world and all its charachers there.  The good, the bad and the ugly. 

It was a great eye opener and a great place to hone in the skill of observing human behaviour.

The piece of advice my mother gave me when I was about 14 was “flattery is like perfume, smell it but don’t swallow it”.

When I worked behind the bar in particular, I smiled to myself at this piece of advise.   All the chat, the chat ups, the drunk men, young and old, thinking they can charm you with with a ‘what a lovely smile, bum, legs, eyes etc etc.  Some were sleezy, grabbing my hand and holding it as they placed their money in it, slurring across the bar what they perceived to be compliments…. I knew what they really wanted and I thought  uh oh, not from me buddy!

Flattery always made me feel a bit nervous, and that men were really quite disingenuous., that they had an ulterior motive and that  they would say things in an attempt to ‘get things’.  I know this is an  unfair assumption and it certainly is to label ALL men.

However, it did help me to separate the wheat from the chaff.  To know a charmer from a genuine interested party when I saw one and it gave me the wherewithall to just politely say, thank you, but no thank you.

So for all the girls out there remember my mums piece of good advise…flattery is like perfume, smell it but don’t swallow it !