Nightmare on Merseyrail

“Ladies” Day at the Aintree Festival is one of the social highlights of the year in Liverpool. It’s a day’s racing I have only attended once and, believe me, that one occasion was more than enough.

The build up to this extraordinary day sees the busiest week of the year in the many fake tan shops in Liverpool as the local lasses add a golden, or is that orange, sheen to their complexion. There is a long standing joke, worryingly based on fact, that if it rains on Ladies Day the puddles are bright orange in colour as the spray on tan runs off the exposed legs.

Being early April the weather isn’t always warm on this day but it doesn’t stop the locals dressing inappropriately for the weather with the outfits more appropriate for high summer than low spring.

Indeed not only are the outfits often inappropriate for the weather conditions, they are frequently and frighteningly wholly inappropriate for the bodies to which they have been applied.

My one trip to Liverpool for Ladies Day remains indelibly etched on my mind and will probably do so until the day I die and I fear no form of regression therapy would ever remove it from my mind.

First of all I have to say I have an eye for attractive ladies and I do prefer my ladies to be curvy – skinny lasses really do not float my boat and if the ladies want to show off their curves that’s fine by me – within reason.

My journey to Ladies Day was made by train and I did the final leg on the local rail service, Merseyrail.

A lady boarded the train and sat opposite me, she was curvy and she was wearing a short skirt, half way up her thighs and her top was, how shall I put it, figure hugging.

It sounds good on first impressions but there was a sting in the tail, or even a couple of stings.

Firstly this was not some young lady in the first flushes of youth, this was a woman who must have been well into her fifties.

Secondly I’m no expert on women’s clothes sizes  but she must have been easily in the high teens, low to mid twenties in terms of size.

It just was not right.

Did she not possess a mirror. A mini skirt is fine but not when you possess thunder thighs, thankfully she was wearing tights but you could still see the markings from the cellulite.

The top was more than worrying – she was beautifully well endowed, something to normally celebrate. However the top was so tight it’s probably safe to say at least 75% of ample bosom was overflowing from this top.

Indeed I was doing some quick calculations to work out if the fabric succumbed to the intense pressure it was obviously under  would I be hit in the face by two expanding breasts.

Her décolletage was the giveaway to her age, no page three complexion here but something more like an orange which has been left out in the sun for far too long as she did, indeed, have the orange glow.

To finish off the “look” she was wearing enough make-up to keep Max Factor in profit for the next decade and she was wearing a perfume almost guaranteed to trigger an asthma attack.

Some of you may well be saying she was probably a one-off example but sadly she sort of set the standard for the day.

The afternoon itself is toxic as the drink flows and the local lads circle the ever drunker girls, like vultures waiting to pounce on their prey.

Post racing sees the unedifying sight of many of the ‘ladies’ looking anything but ladylike, staggering away or maybe just even lying in the gutter throwing up.

Yes Ladies Day at Aintree is an experience but one I was never, ever going to repeat.