Grit is a woman in the modern world

To enter the elite world of dining with posh people, clearly Grit must transform herself. From beatenupoldmotherbag to confident independent woman with fantastic personal style and no visible kids.

I have a tenner and 24 hours. Let's see how I do.

1. Beauty vitality: Complexion
Grit is assured that nothing says upmarket skin better than the application of creamy miracle fluid (£25.99).

In fact, capturing an essential flawless beauty shimmer (£12.99), with glowing translucent skin (£15.99), sparkling with radiance of fresh breeze (£34.50), while scattering and diffusing everlasting light (£18.99) in a single skin solution (£19.99) can all be mine from dawn til dusk (£22), and aren't I worth it? (£18.99).

Grit wanders off down Asda to see what choices her face gets for £1.99.

Not many. I could shove a lightbulb in my mouth to get the full glow effect but carrying a portable generator in my handbag might be difficult. As is filling my porridge chops with free dinner while clutching a light bulb in my teeth.

Lard comes cheap. I hear the Russians swear by it.

Cost: 49p

2. Beauty essential: Make up
Grit has less than an hour for this, so better make a quick choice. After fifteen seconds facing 2,300 make up displays, she realises time is more important to her than anything. Especially time spent agonizing whether or not to buy the rose pink or which of 15,000 shades of brown suits her eyelids.

I should invoice L'Oreal for the hours spent staring at the stuff. Give up.

Cost: zero

3. Looking fantastic: Eyebrow shaping
No way am I paying fifteen quid for a teenager to come at me eye-height armed with a pair of tweezers, reassuring me they are a professional eyebrow specialist, and one NVQ in beauty studies is proof of that. I shall attack my own monobrow thank you very much.

After ten minutes of working left to right I am bored and give in. Anyway, I hear the asymmetric eyebrow look is soooooo vogue.

Cost: zero

4. Glossy, healthy, shining Hair!
Grit is an old hand at this. Provide her with a bottle of Superdrug golden brown and she effects a miracle. So far I have not burned off my scalp, blinded myself, ingested deathjuice, inhaled toxic gases nor ended up in hospital. I mean, how difficult can hair be? Colouring hair at home cannot be any worse an experience than the time down at the hairdressers with the fire alarm when they sent me out into the street with a plastic bag over my head until the fire staff came.

And as for the trim, I have brandy and scissors. What can possibly go wrong? Ditto for the asymmetric cut.

It don't get much better than this

Cost: £2.99

5. Looking stylish! Clothing
Easy. Drag out from back of wardrobe same outfit from last year. Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.

6. Every woman's secret: upholstery
(Underwiring, padding, girdling.)

The cost of a pair of plastic bags shoved under my boobs comes in around 5K and is out of my budget. I am also not out of my mind, and prefer my droops as nature has evolved them. Facing reality that my entire body is on the escalator heading south is life. Anyway, I'm mature enough to quite fancy bodies that are a little aged and beat up, although that is not a very fashionable thing to say, so don't expect to read me on the pages of Marie Claire.

And as for the upholstery, I'm sure I can find an assortment of rubber bands, cling film and craft wire.

Cost: zero

7. Every girl's true love: Shoes
Yes! Believe me on this, because I am no different from your average gal. I discover the most fantastic pair of black suede pointy pointless pieces of gorgeous gorgeousness. They are Divine. And a bargain at the charity shop. They are also size 5. My feet are size 6.

One must suffer for art.

Cost: £2.50

8. This season's must have item: the overnight bag
Simple. Get a sturdy plain grey plastic bag, a little like one that might be given to you at a charity shop containing size 5 shoes, and pin an assortment of old brooches to it. There. Mix of trash and flash, old and new, ephemeral and heirloom. Kate Moss will be seen with one like that next week, betcha, then you'll all be wanting one for 500 quid a pop.

Cost: zero

9. A little something from Tiffany's? Accessories
Daughters come in very useful. They buy glitter tat from Claire's Accessories, then you get to nick it.

(Hazard: do not choose the bracelet with a plastic teddy bear and BFF stamped on its head.)

Cost: zero

10. Ahhhhhh... Je t'adore le smell: parfum
Grit is on a budget here and deliberates whether she should spend her remaining coppers on a bottle of piss down the market or £50 for a bottle of ethanol from the swankiest shop in town.

She opts for a dab of pine disinfectant on the grounds that it carries the essential fresh forest scent and surely evokes visuals of sensuous longhaired nymph types running about in the rudeynudey at midnight.

Cost: zero

Voila! Grit now looks the bees knees and dog's biscuits, fully kitted out in style and allure, and smells like a particularly upmarket lavatory. And has change from a tenner. Let's hit town!