Alison Wassell
In Praise Of Angelica Valentine 1974 - 2024
Angelica Valentine, who has passed suddenly at the age of fifty, is believed to have been one of the first ever Girl’s World Styling Heads. Although the exact date of Angelica’s birth is unknown, she was manufactured by the Palitoy company in 1974. Her early days are undocumented, but it is safe to assume that they involved incarceration in a cardboard box, alongside multiple identical siblings, awaiting her forever home.
In December of that year, she was given as a Christmas gift to Judith Dobson, aged 8, by her favourite aunt. It was Judith who named her Angelica Valentine. Angelica came with her own cosmetics and hair styling tools. Judith did her best with these, but could not muster much enthusiasm, and her skills remained undeveloped. Even today, on the rare occasions when Judith wears make-up, it looks as though it has been applied by a young child. But this is about Angelica, not Judith.
As the years passed, Angelica became less of a toy and more of a confidante. On the face of it, she and Judith had little in common. While Angelica’s PVC complexion was flawless, pre-teen Judith’s skin was prone to breakouts at inopportune moments. There is not one single school photograph that is unblighted by a large spot. The most striking difference between the two, however, was Angelica’s ability to rest comfortably on her four suction feet as Judith was forced to contend with her pubescent body, and the gradual realisation that she was not destined to be shaped like Barbie, or Sindy, or any of the other dolls she had long since consigned to the bottom of the wardrobe.
Ever patient, Angelica provided a sympathetic, listening ear throughout Judith’s high school years, which were filled with sporadic episodes of bullying about her weight, her lack of sporting prowess, her awkward gait, which was due to the fact that her left leg was slightly shorter than her right, the corrective shoe she was forced to wear, her slavish devotion to Kate Bush and, in fact, anything that set her apart from her classmates.
In 1984, Angelica’s life took an unexpected turn when she accompanied Judith to university. Many of Judith’s fellow students found the presence of a plastic head on her bookshelf unnerving. Judith explained her away as an ironic statement or a convenient hat stand. In truth, Angelica remained her only true friend, and she continued to confide in her, late into the night, cataloguing her inadequacies, berating herself for her inability to overcome them, and not realising how thin the walls of her student residence were. Judith quickly developed a reputation as that slightly weird girl in room 16. But this is about Angelica, not Judith.
Angelica’s darkest hour came shortly before the Christmas break that year, when a group of inebriated students invited themselves into Judith’s room on the pretext of an impromptu end-of-term party. Little is known about the events of that evening, from which Angelica emerged with an unwanted haircut and several scars inflicted by a permanent marker.
Life was never the same again for Angelica although she quickly came to bear her scars and her shaven head with pride. The incident was also a pivotal moment for Judith who, for perhaps the first time in her life, found herself more angry than afraid, on her own behalf as well as Angelica’s. In solidarity with Angelica, she shaved her head and acquired a small tattoo of a dolphin on her neck. Taking inspiration from her faithful childhood toy, she learned to love her imperfections and could often be seen limping proudly around campus in clothes that were striking, if not exactly fashionable.
Post university, the newly confident Judith had little need of Angelica, having acquired a small circle of like-minded friends and embarked upon a successful career as a child psychologist. Angelica is thought to have gone into retirement, spending the rest of her days in the attic at the home of Judith’s parents where she was discovered recently during a house clearance. Judith was delighted to be reunited with her old friend, but her happiness was to be short-lived. In a tragic accident Angelica, left unattended for only a moment, was thrown into a rubbish skip by Judith’s husband. The mistake was not discovered until she had been transported to her final resting place, a landfill site. Judith’s husband has not, at the time of writing, been forgiven. But this is about Angelica, not Judith.
Alison Wassell is a writer of short and very short fiction from Merseyside, UK. She recently won the Books Ireland Flash Fiction Competition, has twice been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and has had work published by Fictive Dream, The Disappointed Housewife, FlashFlood Journal, Gooseberry Pie and elsewhere.
