Ok so this is not a fashion blog and I would never be so bold as to suggest you might benefit from anything I might have to say about how best to adorn oneself for any occasion, but recently I suffered fashion déjà vu and I don’t mean in a nice way.

Unfortunately, it seems I am one of those unlucky people, who, when presenting themselves in a beautiful new (and invariably not cheap or machine washable!) outfit for the first time, also finds themselves unfortunately involved in a food or drink spillage incident. Yes, you read that right – I am talking about me, not the Little Chap!

There was the tomato ketchup that dribbled off the French fry I was putting into my mouth at a corporate lunch. That was the first day I wore my new cream linen trouser suit from Episode. The olive oil I splashed down the front of my beautiful new silk dress from Jigsaw – again a first outing and just the tiniest splashette, that being oil had to spread slowly but ever increasingly across the centre front of the skirt!

I am more likely to dribble, splash, wipe or otherwise adorn an expensive new piece of clothing with edible matter than my two-year-old son!

This is not only downright infuriating and a little mortifying; nothing spoils a special occasion quite as well as a ruined frock, I find. It can also prove quite expensive! The dry cleaning bills, the stain removers… I am the customer manufacturers have in mind when they invent their handbag sized stain remover wipes (I never leave home without them)!

I can cope with a bit of stain removal, am even getting quite good at it; talcum powder for grease on a silk tie works a treat! But when a girl’s next birthday is ‘significant’ (let’s leave it at that), it is a little frustrating to still find I am more inept than my toddler in the area of clothes safety at meal times!

Maybe I should have worn a bib, or at least covered my knee with a napkin, as I sat on the tube the other day to grab a quick bite of lunch on my way home from work on my half day. As is always the way, my boss had several urgent requests at the beginning of my lunch break, so technically I was leaving at the end of my lunch break for the day. This timing makes the journey from office to home double up as my only chance to eat lunch all day.

So there I was, sitting down on a brand spanking new tube train, delicious M&S salad eaten, when I decided to tackle the little pot of healthy fresh fruit I’d bought as dessert. Carefully disposing of the salad bowl and fork back into the carrier bag it came from without dropping any oily dressing, I opened the pot of fruit. This was a berry selection – blackberry, blueberry, strawberry and black grapes to be precise.

So what was the first thing to happen? The lid stuck as I opened it, flicking drops of the darkest purple fruit juice across my mushroom coloured pencil skirt (naturally, worn for the first time that day I might add!). Obviously upset and flustered by my usual dose of bad luck, I continue to drop a grape or two onto my skirt as I extract those from the pot as well. This leaves a few colourful marks on my skirt, which I immediately entrusted to the pack of stain removal wipes I mentioned earlier. They of course required a bit of rubbing in and left an attractive wet patch over the stain (Great! Now I look like I wet myself!). The good news was that the purple stain did seem to be receding and, to my enormous relief, was drying quickly.

I have since dared to look at the skirt in question and I am pleased to confirm it has actually survived. So, there we have it. To all of you using the tube to get around during the day, the moral of this story is never leave home without a small handy pack of stain remover wipes. You never know when you might be sitting next to me!

Mayfair Mum x

© Mayfair Mum, 2011