El­sa Wrench

"El­sa should have an e-mail ad­dress,'' says my help­ful friend Jay who has an an­noy­ing habit of al­ways be­ing right (ex­cept for her at­tach­ment to taupe, which is the colour of mould, by the way). Jay can be very per­sis­tent, in a po­lite kind of guilt-trip way, so you feel like you just kicked the dog if you ig­nore her. Most days I am torn be­tween shav­ing her head while she is asleep and tat­too­ing her name on my arm.

But she had a point. As a prop­er li­censed opinon­ista, I need to be more gen­er­ous. Peo­ple should be able to com­ment on my com­ments and share their deep­est thoughts with their favourite ex­pert. Af­ter all, I give the best free ad­vice any­where on top­ics and is­sues that could change the world.

Just last week, I res­cued some poor woman from the tragedy of try­ing to match her evening bag to her dress. Had I not freed her from the shack­les of matchy-matchy, she would have spent the next 72 hours scour­ing shops, and in her frus­tra­tion would have snapped at the chil­dren who, 20 years in the fu­ture, would have to go in­to ther­a­py to re­cov­er from the emo­tion­al abuse. In­stead, she was out of the mall in 15 min­utes with a steel-grey wire-mesh clutch that looked splen­did­ly edgy with the teal sheath.

Whew. The things I do for T&T. As self-sac­ri­fic­ing as I might be, how­ev­er, I have my stan­dards. I don't give away this plat­inum ad­vice to peo­ple who want gold-plat­ed crud. As you read this space, an in­vis­i­ble com­put­er chip em­bed­ded in the page is per­form­ing a reti­nal scan so that your brain­waves can be record­ed in data­bas­es. This al­lows me to find out whether you are tak­ing my im­pec­ca­ble ad­vice se­ri­ous­ly or just rolling it out for a test dri­ve.

The last per­son who ig­nored my opin­ion al­most got ar­rest­ed and thrown in jail for fraud be­cause, on mar­riage, she at­tached her hus­band's sur­name to hers, and so her iden­ti­fi­ca­tion did not match her doc­u­ments and she kept for­get­ting how she was sup­posed to sign her name. I'm just say­ing. Bad things some­times hap­pen to good peo­ple who don't lis­ten when told that women should keep their own names.

So at the end of this space you will find my e-mail ad­dress, which is a tool to be used on­ly for good and in ac­cor­dance with the fol­low­ing terms and con­di­tions:

Don't be rude. If you don't like what I say, go get your own col­umn, Dum­bo.

No, you still aren't al­lowed to car­ry a brown hand­bag with black shoes, so don't both­er ask­ing me to re­verse my rul­ing.

Choco­late is the new black. Very few peo­ple look good in olive. White socks are for foot­ball. Bor­ing ex­cess holes in your ear looks re­al­ly icky when you get old­er and the holes be­come elon­gat­ed and you will look like you were at­tacked with an ice pick. I am not re-rout­ing those points ei­ther.

Don't ask me about af­fairs of the heart. The most I will say on such mat­ters is: live your best life as you de­fine it, not ac­cord­ing to what some­body else re­quires of you. And if you have to ask me whether he's a creep­o­zoid, you prob­a­bly al­ready have the an­swer.

I take re­quests. Got a pet peeve or a burn­ing is­sue that is mak­ing you crazy? Tell me, tell me. I shall de­vote 600 words or less to any top­ic that could help the less for­tu­nate, save lost fash­ion souls, or stop the tide against fools and hum­bug. Un­less I can't be both­ered.

Em­brace the pow­er at wrenchel­sa@hot­mail.com