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Claws

August 30th, 2010 · Lifeblog, Music

This weekend’s ceilidh featured an Actual Barn with Hay In It And Everything, some home-brewed cider, and a cat.

The cat came to see us while we sitting, waiting to play, and consuming the home-brewed cider. Marie, who plays accordion, says that cats make her sneeze. All cats appear to sense this, and thus approach her with great enthusiasm. This one, after investigating all of us and considering our suitability as nesting places, decided to climb onto her back from a nearby table, and do the kneading-with-paws thing all over her neck. With claws. Much wincing ensued.

Eventually it got off her and had another look at the rest of us in a selecting-next-victim kind of way. Since I really like cats, I encouraged it onto my lap. I don’t have a cat (partly because they aren’t allowed in our flat, and partly because what with being in the middle of a town and with no garden it would be rubbish for the cat to live here anyway), but I grew up with them around, and kind of miss them sitting on me. (And they don’t make me sneeze, fortunately.) So I wanted a cat-fix. The cat decided, after further consideration, that I would make a reasonable enough bed. It lay on me, doing some more of the claws thing. Luckily I had a thick cardigan/coat thing on so I couldn’t feel it very much. I mean, I like cats, but I also don’t like pain, and I’m not sure what level of each outweighs the other. For example, how would I feel about an exceptionally adorable kitten wielding an epilator? I cannot say.

Cat, Piano, CiderWhen we were supposed to start playing, I left the cat lying on me, since it looked comfortable. At the point at which we’d got about halfway through the first tune, it slowly sat up, looked around for a bit and then finally decided to get off and go and look for a bed that wasn’t moving slightly from piano-pedalling. Which was a surprisingly high level of tolerance, I thought.

The cat’s owner, whose party it was that we were playing for, said that the cat had been a rescue kitten, which fitted in the palm of her hand when she found him. The vet had said he probably wouldn’t make it through the first night, but she got up every two hours to feed him for two weeks. “And now, we have a stone of cat,” she said.

Overheard at the same ceilidh:

Party guest to hostess: “Hi! How are you? Has everything gone all right?”
Hostess: “Hi! Yes, it’s all been fine – although I am convinced that George Swales doesn’t exist.”

also:

“…but if I give her an earthworm in the middle of winter, she doesn’t know what the ‘eck to do with it!”

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Tidying Up My Bit of The Internet

August 28th, 2010 · Craft, Lifeblog

For ages now I’ve felt that the pieces of the internet that I write on have been a bit of a mess of underused domains and diffuse subject matter, so I’ve been doing a bit of tidying, forwarding old domains to sensible places, and Trying To Become More Focused. This blog here is going to remain as what it predominantly is – a life-and-music-type-blog. But, as was sensibly suggested to me when I ran a reader-survey (probably over a year ago), I probably need more than one blog if I’m going to stay on approximately one topic and write about all the different things I want to write about without the annoying people who want to read the other stuff. If that makes sense.

I’ve decided that all the craft and jewellery stuff that I write about is now going to be posted in a new making-things blog, instead of this one. I have named it helenmakesthings.co.uk because although it’s not a particularly original or inspired name, it is at least straightforward. Also, there are loads of jewellery blogs called things like Purple Fairy Pixie Dust Treasure Box, and helenmakesthings.co.uk was the only domain that was left. Additionally, if I had a blog called Purple Fairy Pixie Dust Treasure Box, you would all have to slap me. If I ever do anything like that, slap me, okay? Anyhoo, if you like the craft stuff, go and see! And subscribe! If you are completely uninterested in it, don’t look, and it will never darken your screen again, unless you get a craft-blog computer virus. (People knit those, you know. But only for Windows.)

Another thing I have done is archive all my very old blogs from when I was at university (and a few years after) so I could delete them from the internet instead of leaving them in cluttered up, broken-templated, and thus password-protected Diaryland accounts. But I found a use for these archives, as it turned out.

A month or so ago, my mum said to me, seemingly at random, “How’s your book going?” And I said, “I’m not really reading one at the moment.” And she said, “No, the one you’re writing. You know, about your exploits.” I had no idea what she might be talking about or where this had come from. I mean, I would like to be able to write a book. For a while I wanted to write a semi-autobiographical one about working in the Lace Shop, except it would have to have included a great deal of fantasy in order to have been more exciting than actually working in the Lace Shop, and therefore saleable. Because it was really pretty dull there most of the time. But I cannot really write a book, because I am very, very bad at writing dialogue.

However, I decided that the first three years of the blog that I started while I was at university (mostly written late at night in my college computer room) would fill a book-sized, er, book, quite nicely, and I could give this to my mum and it would indeed be a Book About My Exploits. (She has read the blog before, admittedly, but not for, like, ten years.) So I made it into a pdf and uploaded it to Lulu, where they’ll make books for anyone who’ll pay for the printing – they’re not fussy – and now it is a book.

procrastinations-1999-2002So, since it’s there – if anyone is bonkers enough to want one, you can get them from here. (There are pdf downloads, too.)

The book has:

  • An archive of the Quotebook
  • Stories about Chamber Orchestra and Gamelan Ensemble and Ola and other musical endeavours
  • Descriptions of hangovers
  • Stuff about drinking alcohol
  • Complaining
  • Other studenty things

You can even read a preview of it on the Lulu page. (The preview is just a few pages, and leaves the reader on an absolute cliffhanger, I have to say.)

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Bad Hairdresser Day

August 25th, 2010 · Lifeblog

So it seems I am systematically having arguments with, or having other means to boycott every public establishment between my house and the city centre. This is rather inconvenient. I now cannot get curry from the local curry house (well, would you go back to a place that served up 2 x AA batteries at the bottom of a takeaway Rogan Josh?), cannot use the nearby dry cleaners (long ridiculous story involving them slightly-burning, losing and then re-discovering a dress of mine, at the end of which I had to have a conversation with the woman who owned it, who, although she agreed that I was entitled to be a little irritated by the situation, just would not stop talking and kept repeating the same things), and as of yesterday cannot go to the hairdressers’ either. The only place that they are still speaking to me is the little organic-type off licence, and even that I’m not totally sure about because I went there during a World Cup match once and my lack of enthusiasm regarding the football may have dampened the staff’s enthusiasm for me. (And they had been quite enthusiastic, previously.)

Hairdressers have been a problem for me for quite some time. When I was 22 I decided to stop going to them, because a) I had no money and b) I couldn’t stand the conversations that they tried to have with me while they were doing it (”Are you a student?” “No” “Are you going anywhere nice on holiday?”) and c) they didn’t always do it how I wanted. I started cutting my own hair, which took ages and was a bit dodgy. For a while a housemate did it for me to a much better standard, but she moved away.

This year I decided I didn’t have the time or the patience to do it myself any more, and decided to risk hairdressers again. I went to one, told him what I wanted, and he did exactly what I asked, without trying to have a conversation with me. This was excellent. But it was in one of those “Turn Up Whenever Without An Appointment And Wait X Minutes” places, and I really prefer appointments. I thought I’d try the one near my house. I gave the same instructions, and a girl there cut my hair exactly as I wanted without trying to have a conversation with me either. I thought I’d cracked it.

So yesterday, I went back to the hairdressers’ near my house. This time I was presented to a different, older woman. I told her I would like a trim, please, with the layers putting back in and the hair shaped diagonally around my face. Exactly what I said to the others. But this one was different. She snipped a few bits off the back, and then said, “Hmm.” This was a little alarming. “Your hair’s very thin-textured,” she said. “Are you sure you want to have layers in it? Because mine is thin-textured and I never have layers in it because it makes the hair look even thinner and you really want to be adding volume, not taking it away.”
“It’s thin?” This was news to me. I’ve been battling against too much volume for most of my life; if my hair is all one length it sticks out in a big triangle. And some people who didn’t like me (it was mutual) on my school bus used to call me Fuzz Head.

She very firmly told me a bit more about how she wouldn’t advise having layers in it. She was being quite aggressive about it, and it actually felt like I was being TOLD OFF for wanting the WRONG HAIR. But I had asked for layers; I was bloody well going to have layers. I wasn’t paying her to boss me into having my hair all one length just because that would look better in her opinion. It’s a bit much, having to suddenly become a defense lawyer in the middle of your own haircut.

I wish that I had gone with my gut reaction at this point, and ripped off the plastic gown, announced, “I don’t think it’s going to work out between us,” and stormed out. But I didn’t. I just told her that my main priority was to reduce the volume, thank you, and would she put the layers in. “Oh I’m sorry,” she said, and went round my hair snipping little bits off until all of the back had been done.

Then she came to the front. “Your natural parting is in the middle.” she said. Previous hairdressers have not said this; they have said “Where would like your parting?” I managed to assert that I would like it just slightly to one side, but this took some doing and it was clearly unsettling her further. “Right, so what happens with the front?” she asked. “Is it a fringe or does it just sort of blend in?” I repeated my request for it to be shaped diagonally around my face, indicating the shape with my fingers.

Then she cut what was essentially a long fringe but only on one side of my head.

“Erm, have you done this side?” I asked, when she had declared herself finished.
“Well no because this is a fringe and your parting is there,” she said.
“Um. It wasn’t actually supposed to be a fringe. And this side isn’t really, er, diagonal like I asked for, maybe you could just-” I was trying to be as nice as possible about it.

She grabbed a bit of the front of my hair and held it in front of my face and said, “Look. That bit. Goes to that bit. Goes to that bit” in a very cross sort of way. And then did the same to the other side. Then she fetched a mirror and snarled, “I have put your layers in. At the back. They’re not any shorter than this because that would look ridiculous.”
“What? I didn’t ask you to do them any shorter!”
“*snarling sounds*”
OK. All right. Can I please go now?”

Then a different member of staff cheerfully took my payment as if everything was just hunky dory, and I went away seething.

Basically, I had just had a bitch-fight with a hairdresser.

I had given her the exact same instructions as I gave to the previous two people who cut my hair. Unfortunately she had a) not listened and b) tried to impose her own ideas about what was correct and normal onto my head, when I hadn’t actually asked for advice. She was making it all about her. But it wasn’t her hair. RAGE.

I’m going to have to be very cautious from now on, but who goes into salons and asks, “Before I book an appointment, can I ask whether your staff harbour dictatorial desires? And are they equipped with ears?” Because that’s what I’m going to have to do.

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