bad hair day

I hate my hair with a passion. Not with quite the same volume of passion as I hated no hair, but close enough that any bright spark telling me to cheer up it’s an improvement, is likely to be just that bit less bright at the tone of my riposte that no it fucking isn’t... well much.

It has grown in spirals, not Pre-Raphaelite curls, but a tight perm of the sort an 85 year old great-grandmother might think was a bargain if the new trainee did it for nowt, as a practise run, just before dying it blue. 

I pray* that when it’s grown longer than its current two inches, an estimate obviously I can’t straighten it out properly to measure, it will start to be affected by the same gravitational force to which the rest of my body seems prey. At the moment it seems to be growing up, which is more than can be said for the rest of me.

*not to a god, which brings me nicely on to the WI, who are rife in this village and insist on doing good works and serving tea and cakes at every turn. This is all fine and dandy, and may even be tasty, but two teas in and they want you to be on some committee and baking cakes.  I may have the hair of an aga-saga old bat, but I draw the line at baking.  Such was the verbal content of my moaning, droning and groaning to my neighbour, the Sensational Susie. Her real name because she would never have time to read crap such as this. 

Never have I had the misfortune to meet such an upbeat and amazing woman who thinks nothing of trekking across the Himalayas in her lunch break. No, seriously, at the age of 60 something she leads trekking holidays in the most forsaken places on the planet and can drink a bottle of vodka in one sitting. When she’s home from these expeditions she’s riding her bike up vertical hills and also (if the WI are to be believed) the local male population.  Although she did apprise me of the fact that in her experience, which I can only imagine is manifold, Russian men are the best kissers. 

She has decided the best medicine for my current state of glass-half-emptyism is drinking what’s left in there, refilling and exercise.  As her idea of a short walk is 10 miles and her idea of a short drink is several of them one after another at at least 50% proof, we’re not off to a great beginning. I’m blaming it on the rain as it makes my curly hair into coiled and compressed springs that would take an eye out if only anyone got that close.  But she is not to be thwarted and has decided if I can’t walk far enough, one drink and I fall over then asleep, and refuse to bake, then it's the ‘rights of way’ committee for me; the only village group, according to Susie, made up entirely of men.  While she wields a large and to the rest of us, unwieldy heavy duty strimmer I can co-ordinate the working parties so she is on the ones with the few remaining men who haven’t had the benefit of her attentions. Then when I’m stronger, I can apparently ‘join-in’. 

She’s the sort of bad influence I needed 30 years ago.