I have had a haircut.
This was not exactly a spur of the moment decision, because I have been looking in the mirror and feeling sorry for myself for quite some time now. Despite this, I have not managed to organise myself sufficiently to do the whole complicated faffing about process of making an appointment and searching out sufficient cash, and then trailing in to Kendal and finding a parking space, and for quite some time self pity has been an easier option.
Actually it is not the first time I have observed this phenomenon. It is always less trouble to drip about whingeing plaintively than to do something about problems. This can turn into quite a successful strategy on occasion, because every now and again it results in Mark either becoming sympathetic or impatient and grumpy and fixing things for me.
Indeed to some extent that is what happened today. When I woke up this morning it was all sticking up round my head, looking so much like a nest constructed by an intoxicated bird, that even Mark looked up from his coffee and kindly suggested that I did something about it, and quite soon.
In fact I have been looking like a Thelwell pony for several weeks now, shaggy and round with a malevolent expression, and when Mark mentioned it this morning I knew that I should procrastinate no longer, because the Time Had Come.
Once Mark had buzzed off to the farm I phoned the hairdresser and a sympathetic girl said that I could come straight away if I wanted to, because by fortunate chance there was a spare appointment in half an hour, so I took it and belted off before I remembered that there was something else that I ought to be doing really.
It is lovely to have short, tidy hair, especially since it comes with a head massage, a cup of coffee and a satisfying gossip with the entertaining hairdressing man.
I came out of his shop with a nice springy feeling in my walk and hardly minded at all that the next job on the list was to go to Asda. I had dashed out in such a hurry that I had forgotten to make a list and so was forced to wander around trying to remember everything we didn’t have in the cupboards, and concentrating furiously on not forgetting things like shampoo and cling film and dog food when they occurred to me in the wrong bit of the shop.
Mark was very complimentary about the haircut when I got home, and so was the youth on the desk at the BodyBeautiful LifeChoice Holistic Wellness Spa when we went for our swim. Number Two Daughter and the dogs failed to notice at all, which I suppose is excusable since she doesn’t really see me very much, but when I brought it to her attention she thought that she might like one as well.
This seemed like a very good idea to me since her current hair design is in my opinion peculiar in the extreme, since it is about half an inch long on one side of her head and about a foot long on the other. It is one of the difficulties of becoming old, I have discovered, that one’s sense of the ridiculous becomes more pronounced, like eyebrows and nostril hair.
She has spent today in Edinburgh, persuading the Japanese at the embassy there that they should give her permission to go and bash about in Japanese ski resorts, which, perhaps surprisingly, they appear to have granted, possibly because she has sobered up and changed her shirt since last night.
They will post her passport back to her next week, appropriately stamped, and so she has got to hang about and wait until it turns up, because of course she can hardly go off back to Dubai without it. Number One Daughter called this morning to say that since her sibling was home for such a long visit, she would come and visit and bring Ritalin Boy, so they are going to arrive this weekend and stay until Tuesday.
This is, of course, good news.
I am glad I have got a haircut and been to Asda.
I am going to have to spend the rest of the week cooking.
