Forget bonfires, embrace vanity

Which is wrong.

The surest cure for vanity is a 4am fire alarm in university halls, when your hair has turned itself into a mountain range overnight, and you have pillow imprint creases on your make-up-free face.

I'll give Mr Wolfe the benefit of the doubt and say loneliness comes a close second '“ fitting, anyway, after the sight of you, sans mascara, with the Pennines on your head, sends everybody running in fear when you congregate in the car park.

Middle of the night fire alarms are one of those fantastic bonding experiences, like delayed trains or incredibly hot weather.

Or when there's a noteworthy drunk doing something embarrassing on public transport, that force us to stop being formal and British, and accept humanity as it is (impatient, sweaty, and disturbingly compelled to have a look when someone's urinating on a bus).

For in a fire alarm, vanity comes up against the mother of all oppositions '“ possible death '“ and we are forced to reassemble all our superficial priorities into an order that has surviving and not being deep-fried at the top, above never letting anyone find out I wear a hairnet and rollers in bed like a housewife from the '50s, and other such trivialities.

When you've seen someone in a pair of snoopy pyjamas and a bite-guard, a deep link is forged between you that cannot be erased by mere issues such as actually liking each other.

Of course, the height of fire alarm excitement is Towel Law. The involuntary Russian Roulette of communal bathrooms, Towel Law states whatever time the fire alarm is set off, be it 5am or lunchtime, at least one person in the building must be having a shower.

Every time you wash, you risk being the one who stands outside in a towel while half of Camden's fire service triple check every room then have a seemingly pointless half-hour chat in the foyer.

The rule, then, is shower quick to minimise the danger, and enjoy the adrenaline buzz each time the fateful bell goes and you've escaped the cruel blow of Towel Law yet again. One day, it will be you.

The real terror of the fire alarm, though, far beyond vaguely embarrassing nightwear or a tea tree face masque for men, is being seen with no make-up on.

Call me shallow. Call me insecure. Call me a rubbish feminist.

I'm not fussed as long as I can have a bit of slap on while you're doing it.

Because, much as I would love to be one of those girls who rolls out of bed, puts on some lip salve and spends all day glowing like a milkmaid in a Thomas Hardy novel, my face just likes to wear make-up.

It sulks without it, and retaliates by making my eyes all small and squinty. People ask if I'm ill.

Actually, I lied just then '“ I wouldn't like to be the wholesome, fresh-faced, milkmaidy type at all, because they are usually insufferably smug about the whole thing.

Furthermore, I could cheerfully punch all those men who profess to prefer the natural look, unaware that the look they have in mind requires more scientific trickery and skilled technical procedure than a space launch.

Faced with the real natural look '“ blotchy, squinty, bristly and unstraightened, like a nation of female Calibans '“ how many would decide that a touch of eyeliner isn't such a bad thing after all?

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then vanity must surely be in the eye of whoever saw the object preening and pruning themselves before they went to meet said beholder.

My friend Tara, whose place in my life is largely dependent on always being as ridiculous, if not more ridiculous than myself, recently claimed that if she woke up in a burning building with time to grab only one object, it would be her make-up bag.

Photos, pets, even shoes, could all be forsaken provided she doesn't have to spend the few hours between escape and the shops opening in a mascaraless state.

Which, of course, is ridiculous, and I can promise even I wouldn't sink to that level of vanity.

No, I've sensibly taken to sleeping in my make-up instead. Just in case.