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!

Things I once believed

That rottweiler was pronounced ‘rock-weiler’

That my mum was telling the truth when she said, “O, Laura, you’ve got to eat your sprouts, I got them especially for you.”

When a planes flies over and you stop and wave to it, the red light that flashes on its under carriage is the pilot waving back.

Sausage dogs just hadn’t grown up yet.

One day I would marry Michael Jackson.

I also believed that Lisa Marie Presley had ‘stolen’ him from me.

That I would grow my hair until it wad the longest in the world and get into the Guiness Book of Records.

I had a singing range similar to Mariah Carey’s.

My diary would one day be published, like Anne Frank’s.

There was a boy living in my attic like a fugitive.

That my Dad was saying “Whitey Ess” when he talked about a work training programme called YTS.

There was a possibility that I might well be stolen by monsters who could make my bed sink into the floor and into a pit where children were kept as slaves.

Life was like Famous Five books. I was always looking for adventures and was puzzled by the lack of smugglers and baddies.

Laura’s top tips

A few days ago, I was reading Chat and I came across some top tips that were madness. For example, eat your kiwi fruit out of an egg cup. That was it. That was the whole tip and it won £25. So I thought to myself, “Wait a minute, I can do this too.” So now, especially for you, I present Laura’s Top Tips! Enjoy.

Got short hair and want it longer? Stand next to a horse’s tail and drape it over your shoulder. Everyone will think it is your hair!

Running out of milk and bread at home? Take £3 and go to the shop and get some more!

Hair too curly all the time? Buy straighteners and straighten it.

Jumper got a hole in it? Fill it in with paper machier. No-one will be able to tell the difference.

Feeling ill? Take some medicine! You will be better in no time.

Got floorboards on your floor and fed up of hoovering all the time? Just sweep the dirt into a pile and brush it down the gaps in between the floorboards.

Getting cold in the evenings? Keep a Downstairs Duvet next to the sofa and snuggle under it when it starts getting chilly.

Worried about what to cook for dinner? Use a cookbook!

Ever wonder why your clothes take ages to dry when they’re in a pile on the ground? Put them over a clothes horse individually and wait until dry.

Bored? Read a book!

That’s it for today. I don’t want to overload your brain with my amazing tips so I’ll do some more another day. Good luck with the tips, I hope they help you.

The pesto incident

At work, we do a sandwich which has pesto on it, instead of mayonnaise. Well, actually, it’s pesto mixed with mayonnaise. We only use it on one sandwich, a chicken and avocado combo which is quite popular. If, for whatever reason, we don’t do any of the chicken avocado sandwiches, the pesto mayo doesn’t get used.

I think that is what must have happened the day before The Pesto Incident. The pesto mayo had, I think, developed a little skin on it’s surface inside the bottle.

I was starting work at 11am that day. I wandered in, all casual from my long lie in and the lovely weather. I was wearing a white summery dress, embracing the sunshine. As soon as I entered, though, I could feel there was a bit of a rush on. The person in the kitchen was evidently having a rubbish time of it and they asked me to take over.

I grabbed an apron and got stuck in. The first sandwich was something fairly straight forward, a pastrami and mustard, or something like that. Next up, the chicken avocado number. Great, I love making this sandwich.

Chicken in pan to warm. Grab bread. On chopping board. Put pesto mayo on bread… I squeezed the bottle but no blob of pesto mayo came out. What was wrong? (Remember that little skin it has got from not being used the day before?) I shook it slightly and squeezed again. It felt like there was something hard pushing back against me. I’d show that pesto mayo. Squeeeeeeeeze! Nothing. What is WRONG with it? Both hands this time. Squeeeeee….

PESTO EXPLOSION!

I looked up in shock, still holding the pesto bomb in my hands.

It. Was. Everywhere. It had hit both walls either side of the kitchen and found it’s way, miraculously, into the toaster. The bread on the chopping board was barely visible underneath the pesto mountain which covered it. It had gone on the underside of the shelves which held the crockery and even over to the sink (a fair distance away) and on the wall and taps and drying rack over there.

Then I looked down. It was covering the top half of my apron, my lovely white summer dress and my hair. I had gone for a girly down-do that day, a long plait which had been hanging forward over my shoulder at the time of the explosion. It was now covered in pesto mayo. From the elbows up, my dress was covered with large splats.

Ever the pragmatist, I ignored it all and finished up the sandwich. As I put it on a plate and turned around to take it out, my manager walked into the kitchen and looked at me in shock. Then laughed. Then told me to go home and change.

My hair still smelled like pesto all day.

A dedication to my childhood friend

My favourite friend when I was a little girl at school had blond hair, like me. She was a little bit short, like me. And we were always together. People used to mix us up.

One time we swapped shoes for fun at breaktime and forgot to swap them back. Our parents were quite annoyed at us when we went home with the wrong shoes on.

We used to play with two dinosaur shaped erasers, one blue and one green. The game we played consisted of us burying the dinosaurs at break time then coming back at lunch time and digging them up. It was a pretty good game, if I remember rightly. We were about six years old and inseparable.

When we were about nine or ten, my favourite friend said she was moving away. They were moving Wales, which was the other side of the world for all I knew! I now know that it was essentially just down the road, a few hours at most. But then, it was the most far away place I could imagine. I was pretty gutted.

A few years of letter-writing later and we planned a visit. My mum drove a friend and I to her house and we stayed overnight. It was hilarious. We ‘made’ a Ouija board and made out we were terrified of looking in the mirror at midnight. We giggled and pulled our stuff into the front room, away from the mirrors, to sleep.

A few years later, my friend came to Liverpool to stay over. Another friend was there too and we had great fun. The next visit was a few years later, when my friend came to look at the university in Liverpool on an open day.

Then I left for Africa and lost contact with most people. I then went to university in Glasgow for a bit and one day, I decided to try texting her old phone number. She was still using it! Amazing! A bit of catch up and lunch in Liverpool next time I was back re-established the friendship.

Next thing I knew, I was back and forth travelling quite a bit before settling into a different course in London and we start emailing again. She’s in Thailand, teaching! Perfect. I had just started sponsoring a little girl in Viet Nam and was really keen to visit her. So I planned a trip to see my little sponsor girl in Viet Nam and my friend in Thailand. It was one of the best trips I’ve ever been on. It was such fun.

The next year, after she had returned to England, I went back to Asia with a friend and she came for two weeks of our trip. That was in 2007. She moved to Hungary for a few years next.

I don’t think we’ve seen each other since then. We’ve been friends a long time now. Over twenty years. I don’t think I’ve known anyone (excluding family) for that long!

And then, a few months ago, my friend Facebooked. She had a place on a postgraduate course at my old university, down the road!

This is very exciting. For a whole year, my childhood best friend will be living down the road, instead of across the world.

Tonight, she is coming for dinner. I am preparing a feast. When I get excited, I cook. I hope I don’t burn everything now, in a frenzy of excitement and forgetfulness.

A boy I once loved

Once upon a time, when I was about 14 years old, I went to a Saturday drama group, in pursuit of my ultimate goal of being the best actress in the history of the world. Obviously.

There was a boy at this drama group, called Tommy. Tommy Sherlock. And I was obsessed. He filled my every waking thought. I thought he was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen. Ever.

The first week my friend and I went to the group, everyone was introducing themselves and he introduced himself as ‘God’. I thought this was the funniest thing I had heard anyone say in my life.

He had dark hair and blue eyes. He wore Adidas trainers and when my own trainers got too worn out, I bought the same pair that he had. He also wore those grandad socks that were fashionable for a while. The Pringle ones with diamonds on them, you know? So I wore them.

He played the lead male in a peice we worked on for a while. He had to sing at one point and of course he had a great voice. A girl called Sian played his girlfriend in the peice. I hated her. One week she wasn’t there so I stood in for her. When he pretended to put a ring on my finger, he had to touch my hand…. I wrote about it in my diary.

I thought Mrs Laura Sherlock sounded pretty good and worked out a signature I would use.

Now I’ll tell you the sum total of what I knew about him.

………..

Erm…… His name….. And what he looked like….

Erm…..

Erm….

Nope…. I got nothin’.

Seems a bit silly now.

Trolls

This word is being bandied around a lot lately, it’s the new name for people who commit crimes on social media sites, like Twitter. Sometimes it’s a racist slur, sometimes it’s misleading people. Or whatever. The people who commit these online crimes, are being called Trolls.

It puzzles me. How is posting a racist insult on Twitter similar to a ugly creature that lives under a bridge and won’t let you cross unless you answer some questions?

Anyway, that is a small aside and not what this post is about. Because hearing all this Troll talk got me thinking about those troll toys you used to get. Does anyone remember these? Check them out on Amazon if this isn’t ringing any bells – http://www.amazon.co.uk/trolls-Toys-Games/s?ie=UTF8&keywords=Trolls&rh=n%3A468292%2Ck%3ATrolls&page=1

They were these ugly little things, naked, with a burst of long brightly coloured hair. Whoever thought these would sell? If I’d have seen the idea in the company boardroom I would’ve told them to shelve it, it’ll never work. But it did. My friends and I all had them. I’d sit with mine for ages, plaiting the hair, unplaiting it, doing bunches, taking them out, doing a ‘fish-plait’ (cause that was quite cool then). Hours, I spent with mine, hours!

They got more complicated, they had dresses, they came in different sizes, they came in keyring format, fridge magnet format, huge lumbering ones that took up loads of your bed. Pink, purple, yellow, green, blue! And they were the ugliest things you’ve ever seen. Why was I so obsessed?

And so I come to it, one of my biggest childhood regrets. Such a wasted opportunity. Such potential for joy, thrown away in a moment of frivolity and strange obsession.

It was coming up to my birthday, I don’t know which one, maybe 6 or 7. And I had been asked what I wanted for my birthday. Trolls, only trolls, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more! We were out shopping, I think my auntie and mum were there. There was a shop which sold trolls. We went in. And that’s when I saw them – two HUGE trolls in wedding outfits! A groom with a black suit and coat tails and purple hair, and a bride in a white dress and long pink hair.

I wanted them. I wanted them more than I’d ever wanted anything. I looked at my mum and auntie and they agreed that they’d get me them for my birthday present. So I had them, these huge trolls. I put them on my bedroom window sill and played with their hair a little bit, but mostly just watched them, standing there, admiring their hugeness.

Now you tell me if you agree with me. But what a WASTE! What a big fat waste of a year’s worth of birthday present?!

I didn’t ride a bike until really late. I could’ve done with asking for a bike and getting started on that sooner. Or a book? I’ve never read some real classics, like The Water Babies and I was a late arriver to the Winnie The Pooh fanclub. There was surely plenty more things that would have been a far better idea.

But no. I wanted two massive ugly trolls in wedding attire with illuminous hair, to stand on my window sill.

I’m beginning to doubt the sanity of my 7 year old mind.

A little game of Would You Rather

Ok, the rules of Would You Rather go like this. I ask if you’d rather do one or the other of two things. You pick which one. Simple. The answer ‘I don’t know’ is not allowed. ‘I wouldn’t pick either’ is also forbidden. There is a man with a gun to your head who will shoot you if you don’t choose one. There is no way to escape him. You MUST choose. If you need to ask questions to expand upon either choice, that’s fine. Ok, are you ready? Remember, you must choose one.

1. Would you rather… Have a five metre body and five centimetre legs OR a five centimetre body and five metre long legs?

2. Would you rather…. Have a perfectly spherical body, like an orange OR have skin that is the texture of popcorn?

3. Would you rather… Have hands that look like hooves OR hands that look like florets of broccoli?

4. Would you rather… Be made of paper OR be made of jelly?

5. Would you rather…. Be always too cold OR be always too hot?

6. Would you rather… Have a rare disease where you are allergic to everything except chicken livers so that’s all you’re allowed to eat OR have a skin condition where you have to apply face moisturiser made of drain water every day?

7. Would you rather… Bathe in the watery bit that you get on top of the mustard OR bathe in the water that chicken has been poached in?

8. Would you rather…. Have a nose like cauliflower OR facial skin like potato peelings?

9. Would you rather… Be gored in the stomach by a vicious bull OR have your face eaten by scorpions?

10. Would you rather… Have a disease where you always fall over and smash your face on the floor OR have a disease where you grow thick curly hair all over your entire body?

A reflection on my week of swimming

I have noticed some things, both external and internal, about myself since I started swimming.

My body has had a reaction to the regular wetting and drying by giving me dry skin. I have reacted by always having on me moisturisers and nice face and body washes.

My shoulders, which were quite achy after introducing back stroke, have adapted quite well and no longer feel like they are going to drop off whenever I leave the pool. I am a bit worried about getting muscly shoulders and arms, though. We all saw what happened to Madonna’s arms when she became a yoga freak and I just don’t feel that it’s a good look.

Now, it’s nice to be presentable but most women, like me, will probably let their legs go a bit hairier than is socially acceptable before shaving unless there’s a chance they’ll be getting them out for some reason, to wear a dress, for example. Because I have been going swimming every day, there is no rest period for the legs, they must be presentable all the time. For someone who’s quite lazy, it’s a bit of a shock to the system.

My hair isn’t so sure about the whole getting-wet-every-day thing. I put a bit of conditioner on when I shower afterwards but because it’s getting wet every day, I forget which days it needs it’s proper wash on. It also has become more frizzy in general. I think I will get a swimming cap soon.

I’ve also noticed about myself, that I’m not very interactive when I exercise. When I used to cycle everywhere, I didn’t watch the Tour de France with bated breath or ask other friends who cycle to come on a ride with me. And it’s the same with swimming. I’m not that interested in chatting to my fellow swimmers in the shower about the heating in the outdoor pool or how great my session was. Nor will I be putting a Tom Daly (is that his name? The swimming boy?) poster on my wall. I just want to swim, thank you. Does this say something about me? That I’m more interested in myself than other people?

I also don’t know what the big deal about wearing a swimming costume was. I didn’t wear one for years because I was pretty horrified at the idea of being so undressed in public. But now I just throw it on and go.

I’m also very exact about how I do things. When I swim, I make sure I’m doing it properly, I watch other people who are doing it properly and copy them exactly. I’m constantly thinking about every bit of my body when I swim, my arms, where I’m looking, how I’m kicking my legs, how my body is sitting in the water. That’s why I can’t understand when other people don’t swim properly. Back stroke is the most misused stroke I’ve seen so far. People just flinging their arms backward in any old fashion and making an almighty riot about it. Even when I go shopping, I’m very precise about how I walk around the shop, I don’t just head to one place and grab stuff. I go up and down each aisle in the shop, starting at the veg section, missing out the freezer section, and finishing at the cleaning products. When I’m in work it’s the same, everything has a certain place and my equilibrium is all off if things are out of place.

Is there a secret child with OCD hiding inside me? I’m doubting my sanity after admitting how I shop.

So anyway, that’s what my week of swimming has done for me. It’s been great actually. I feel a lot fitter. And my bingo wings are a little less flab and a little more firm. I’m going to keep it up, I think. Not every day but maybe every other day.

Evidence of a misspent youth

I still know all the words to the ‘rap’ in Mysterious Girl by Peter Andre.

 

My Barbies and Kens had specially made (by me) paper underwear.

 

I know all the words to 99% of Backstreet Boys songs and can still do the dances that my cousin and I made up to about four of the songs from the album, Backstreet’s Back.

 

There are hours of video tape of me doing a ‘chat show’ on the camcorder.

 

My friend and I spent two weeks waiting anxiously for a reply to a letter we had written to PJ and Duncan (AKA Ant and Dec) saying we were going to their concert soon and were really good dancers and did they need backing dancers because we were obviously the people for the job. We had even made up some routines ourselves.

 

I have a drawer FULL of hair straightening products in my old bedroom… My hair has always been, and will always be, wavy/curly.

 

I have another drawer FULL of different coloured pens. I was extremely religious about what colour I underlined the date with, and whether it was a double underline or a squiggly line or a cloudy bubble thing.

 

There are hundreds of pieces of novelty wrapping paper dotted around my old bedroom. I never wrapped anything with them. I just kept them.

 

I have an exercise book full of ‘song lyrics’ I wrote (!). They were full of unrequited love and grand statements about life….. I was 14.

 

The vast amount of make-up I owned and the hours I spent in front of the mirror, with a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine, learning how to apply it… It always looked ridiculous and now I can’t remember the last time I wore any.

 

I spent at least 50% of my entire teenage years watching/re-watching/discussing/quoting from Friends.

 

I am now a Tetris demon.

 

I must have tried 5000 times to get past the big baddie at the end of the Starlight Zone on Sonic The Hedgehog and could never do it.

 

I spent a significant portion of my time wishing I was George from the Famous Five and pretending to be tomboyish. I even joined the girl’s football team at school and played half a match. Once.

 

I used to write and re-write (in different colour pens, with different underlining, in swirly writing or bubble writing) a list of the names I liked for my future children…. What a ridiculous idea!