An imaginary conversation with the star of this week’s Chat

Imagine the scene. You’re at a pub, let’s say, with some friends. It’s one of those things where you’re all sitting around, you’re comfortably tipsy, people start name-dropping, you know the type of thing I mean. One person mentions their brush past a local politician ten years ago and soon everyone’s at it.

“Well, yes, of course Brad Pitt’s always around town now because he’s bought that house down the road.”

“O really? You know, I get the same thing when I serve Ian McKellan a coffee every morning. Yes. Didn’t I mention? Yes, he gets a cappuccino, no chocolate.”

“I totally saw Gary Barlow the other day on the train. I said hi to him. He seemed really lovely.”

“Well, my cousin’s mum’s nan is Cilla Black so we’re always seeing celebs. Yeh, totally.”

And then…. The claim to beat all claims…. One of your gang pipes up with, “I was in Chat the other week.”

Wowzers. Everyone is floored. What better claim to fame is there than that?!

“Amazing! What were you in it for?” you ask.

“O, I was the fat bloke on the front cover with a massive hangy fat section where my skin was all loose and stretchy.”

“O. Ok. And what did you talk about in the story?”

“All about how I had low self confidence so I started to eat more and then I had no-one and nothing and thought ‘what’s the point’ and hated myself and couldn’t even look at myself in a mirror. My sister was in the story too, talking about how her boobs are just flaps of skin that she rolls up and puts inside her bra to try and make it look like proper boobs.”

“Great. Uh. So what did you do about it? When you hated yourself and couldn’t stand the sight of yourself and felt really self conscious?”

“O, I went straight to Chat, of course. I told them all about it and they printed a really super massive picture of me with no clothes on and told my story.”

“Did that help?”

“I dunno. But that’s not the point is it? The point is that Chat is always the place to go with all your woes. And also, now I’m famous. That’s my life’s work, right there. I am an achiever. I have done things and achieved things. I am The Chat Man.”

“Good one…. *aside to other friend* your Cilla Black story was better.”

And now imagine that that man is you. Imagine that’s the single interesting thing you have done in your life. Depressing.

Hair

Yesterday I did some stuff for Christmas. You know, all the obligatory stuff, getting a new dress, beautifying etc. Of course I didn’t pre-book anything, I just walked into a few hairdressers and said, “Can I get my hair done? Like, now?” Obviously most places didn’t have any appointments but I found one eventually.

The woman doing my hair was called Katy. She seemed nice enough but a few things were going on yesterday to prevent me becoming best friends with her:

1. I had quite a sore throat.
2. I had just hurriedly purchased a Christmas dress which had the potential to be totally the wrong thing for me, given that I imagine myself to be a tall stylish supermodel when I am actually small, non-descript and possessing rather large thighs.
3. I’m very aware of the forced nature of conversations in hairdressers and thus, find them quite uncomfortable. It’s like chaining a bear up and making it dance.
4. Becoming best friends takes time, something I did not have on my side.

And so, because of all these things, the conversation with Katy The Hairdresser went like this:

Katy: Hiya, I’m Katy. I’ll be doing your hair today. What type of thing are you looking for?
Me: It just needs a trim really, to get all the dry ends off.
Katy: O yeh, I can see the split ends. When did you last get your hair done?
Me: Ummm. Don’t remember.
Katy: So do you want me to put the layers on after I’ve cut it?
Me: I don’t mind. It’s just hair, isn’t it? Do what you think will look nice.
Katy: Ok. Shall I…?
Me: Just do whatever you think is best. I trust you.
Katy: What about if I…?
Me: Anything. Whatever you’d like.

*we walk to the sinks and she starts washing my hair*

Katy: Is the water warm enough?
Me: Yeh thanks.

*silence*

Katy: So are you local to the area?
Me: Yeh, I just work up the road.

*she finishes and we walk to a chair, where I sit*

Katy: What are you up to today? Christmas shopping?
Me: Just getting a dress for Christmas day.

*silence*

Katy: Shall I put some layers in around the front?
Me: Yeh, go for it.

*silence*

Katy: Ok, are you happy with that?
Me: It’s great. Thanks so much.

Because this conversation was all that filled the hour it took to get my hair done, I had plenty of time to think. To think about my hair. Every so often I pay attention to my hair but I mainly just kind of let it get on with its own thing. Yesterday’s thought process went something like this:

Maybe I should cut all my long hair off next year? Who has long hair anymore? You can’t do anything with it. Look at all these people getting their hair done, it’s all short and funky. Mine’s just long and boring. Yeh, I’ll definitely get it cut all off next year. I remember when I got it cut really really short. That was fun. Maybe I’ll do that? Have a boy cut? Maybe I’ll get a colour? My hair’s not brown or blonde. It’s just inbetweeny. Boring. O wait, there’s a girl with long hair which looks really lovely. Maybe I’ll keep my long hair then? Yeh, I’ve got to think about how I’ll tie it up for work if it’s really short. But colour. That woman’s hair over there is a nice dark brown. Or perhaps something outrageous like bright red? Omygodomygod, there’s soooo much to think about!

And so my hair, which has previously just been ‘that stuff on top of my head,’ dominated most of my thoughts yesterday! I still haven’t decided what I will do about it.

In other news, look what arrived in the post!

The worst date ever? (and more getting excited)

This isn’t really about the actual date, although it was pretty bad. It’s more about my reaction to the date.

When this gentleman asked me out to dinner, it was one of those out-of-the-blue, I-don’t-really-know-you-very-well, this-is-a-surprise things. I thought he might be nice so I said yes and he immediately gave me his phone number on a piece of paper. He’d obviously planned ahead.

On designated Dinner Day, I turned up and we walked to the restaurant. Not a lot of chat going on but I thought we’d get talking when we sat down. We got to the Japanese restaurant and got menus. The waitress came over pretty quickly and he said he was ready to order food. He ordered a bunch of stuff and then the waitress left so I realised he must have ordered for both of us. I was a vegan at the time and just knew he wouldn’t have ordered anything suitable. Anyway, when the food arrived, I managed to nibble on a vine leaf or something. This was all happening relatively quickly and the food was a good topic of conversation so I didn’t notice the main problem until we went for a little drink at the pub. We got a drink each and sat down at the table…. And I started up a few conversations… And nothing… Nothing! He had nothing to say! Disaster!

Now I’m quite a chatty girl. The type you have to shush if you want a turn at saying something. I can find something to say about most stuff. But this was ridiculous. I was expected to conduct the entire evening like a monologue because he didn’t have a thing to say!

Sample conversation:

Me: “So where did you grow up?”
Man: “Alaska.”
Me: “O that’s interesting! What’s it like there?”
Man: “Nice.”
Me: “…Um. So when did you move here?”
Man: “Two years ago.”
Me: “… Um. I grew up in Liverpool. It’s really nice there, yeh. I moved here a few years ago, to go to uni. I really like it….. etc etc…”

One word answers. And no conversation starters. Every time I asked a question, just a single word answer and no return questions. I ended up just asking myself questions and then answering them, for the sake of there being some conversation. He told me one thing, about a scene in The Simpsons where they made a joke about a computer and emailing. He really laughed. That was the high point of his conversation offerings for the night.

Suffice to say, I scarpered as soon as possible and ignored his ‘I miss you’ text sent the next day. ‘Of course you do,’ I thought, ‘You live in a world of silence. Of course you miss someone who’s talking to you.’

So I forgot about it and moved on… Until one day I was at work. I worked in a little coffee place in a train station. The customers could see inside most of it but there was a part just out of sight where the stock room was. As I was leaving the stock room to come around to the front, I looked up and saw The Man From The Date approaching. Like a rabbit caught in the headlights, I stopped dead and ducked down. There was a bin next to where I was standing so I crouched behind it. It wasn’t a very big bin, mind you. If he had looked over, he would definitely have seen me. After he left, my colleagues were looking at me strangely. I pretended to be searching around for something.

It happened the next day as well. I was standing next to the coffee machine, in full view and I saw him approaching from the left. So I just ducked down and stayed still. Ridiculous. When the other person on shift saw that I hadn’t made the drink, she came over to make it, so I had to move out of the way. I crawled (that’s right, crawled) across the open space into the stock room to hide. It was a pretty open-plan place. All he had to do was look slightly to his left and he would have seen me crawling across the floor. How stupid is that?

Why didn’t I just stay standing up and say something normal like, ‘Hi’. I could have done it in a detached way, to let him know I was just being polite and not inviting any interaction. Not that he knew how to do that anyway. But for some reason, I just kept hiding from him. It happened one more time, and I leapt over to the bin to hide again. I then didn’t see him for a while until he arrived a few months later, with a girl in tow so I stopped hiding behind bins then. How silly.

The moral of this story is = don’t say yes to a date before you’ve ascertained whether it’s possible to converse with the asker.

On a completely different note – in my quest to get more excited about stuff, it’s my friend’s birthday today. She’s Filipino so I’m going to embrace everything Philippines for the day. Their flag is red and blue mainly (I’ll whip out the jumper and coat I wore to get excited about the Jubilee) and the Spanish were there so I’m going to say ‘Hola’ instead of hello to everyone today (yes, I’m aware that they don’t say hola, they say ‘Kamusta’ but people won’t know what I’m going on about if I say that). I’m also going to have fish for dinner because I remember eating a lot of fish when I was in the Philippines. I’ll report back tomorrow.