Bad hair

Today, I went to get my hair cut. Apparently, the difference between a good haircut and a bad one is about 3 weeks.  For me it’s been a lot longer than 3 weeks. In fact, I estimate that it’s been nearly a year.  Mea culpa.

I hate going to the hairdresser. I prefer, if the need arises, to go to the dentist. Not that I’m suggesting or inferring that I would let my dentist cut my hair. No, each to his own. I’d just rather sit and make strange noises with my mouth full of ironmongery than have my hair cut, however competent the person wielding the scissors.

The time had come, however, for me to do something about my hair. It was so neglected that I have found myself admiring the hairstyles of itinerants and bag ladies and wondering how they managed to look better coiffed than me. The answer wasn’t difficult.

As a small child, I was “blessed” (according to those who didn’t share my “blessing”) with naturally curly hair. This was all fine when I was too small to care, but later it became the bane of my life. I even recall one visit to the hairdresser during my teenage years where I walked all the way home under an umbrella. It wasn’t even raining.

By the time I reached the age of about 16, however, someone in the world of hairdressing had discovered blow-drying. This was a major breakthrough, as, until that point, the nearest I had ever come to having straight hair was when my (older) second cousin revealed that she ironed her hair, and I decided to give it a try. I was soon to discover that this isn’t a job for one person, and certainly not if that one person has quite short hair. After painfully managing to iron my left arm, I decided that I was doomed to curls. And then came the blow-dry.  At last, armed with the appropriate hairbrush and dryer and a strong will, I could eliminate the curls that had become the bane of my life. Well, until the weather got damp or it rained, at least!

It took a good many more years before I managed to grow my hair to any sort of length, and since then I’ve gone from the sublime to the ridiculous, having buzz-cuts with clippers, or going months without crossing the threshold of a hair salon.

Now that I’m a Woman of a Certain Age, long hair is probably not the best choice, but it keeps me out of the salon for longer. Not only that, but I can wake up in the morning and look in the mirror without recoiling in fright, and I can tie it back in an approximation of a neat chignon and get away with it. Anyway, it’s not exactly long….this time last year I was just post-buzz-cut, so it barely scrapes my shoulders at this point. Or it did this morning.

Given my lack of enjoyment of the whole salon experience, I have to strike when the iron’s hot, and the iron was hot today. I gathered up my courage and drove to the hairdresser. The ends of my hair have, over the last few months, become so dry that I have been a fire hazard, and it could go on no longer. The hairdresser managed not to recoil in horror as I released my hair from the clip, for which I gave her extra points.  She lifted a handful of hair, which, through the very unforgiving mirror in the salon, made me look like my mother with a bale of hay on her head. 

It’s over now…thankfully.  My hair feels wonderfully soft and smooth, as opposed to crispy, and there still appears to be enough left for me to gather it up and tie it back. You’d really think that at my age I’d have got over my fear of hairdressers, but in spite of my assurances, when prompted, that yes, I would have a regular trim every three months, I’m going to have to steel myself for the next time.

Spring and sewing

Spring has sprung!

Well, it probably hasn’t, actually, although the daffodils are all ready to pop at any minute in Nowhere-on-Thames, and TH suddenly felt the urge to plant some tomato seeds today. Well, when I say “plant” I mean he’s filled the seed trays with compost and told me where to find them. He is to gardening what Henry VIII was to marriage guidance.

Anyway, the sun was out, the sky was blue, and I was suddenly all energetic and keen to get on with…something.  In the end,  I got on with doing a bit of sewing. I’d brought some bits of fabric back from Nowhere-in-France, planning to make a doorstop. The shops are full of them recently, and we actually needed one for one of the bedroom doors, so in the spirit of “HOW MUCH????? For THAT??? You’re having a laugh!” I decided to have a crack at making one. And, though I say so myself, it’s come out rather well.

Whilst I was in full “Blue Peter” mode, there has been an old sweater kicking around the house for some weeks, which I had thought of giving to the charity shop until I discovered that a moth, or possibly several moths, had eaten quite a bit of it. So I thought I’d have a go at making it into a cushion cover. Now, I can make cushion covers. I have many years of experience, owing to the fact that we had a care-in-the-community rescue Labrador for a long time, and whilst he was a gentle and loving soul, he never managed to overcome a need to eat cushion covers.  Making cushion covers out of old sweaters, however, is a new one on me, and meant that I got to try out a hitherto-unused stitch on my sewing machine. I was quite surprised at how well it worked.

I'm wondering what to make next, and TH is looking slightly perturbed. Clearly wondering whether his knitwear is safe....

Documentation, Dead Birds and Darkness

Yesterday was a funny old day back in Nowhere-on-Thames.

It was the day of my once-in-a-blue moon teaching observation at college, so my boss was due to attend my evening class and check whether I’d forgotten how to teach.  As I’ve said before, I hesitate to use the term “teacher” to describe myself, lest I am found out, so I always assume that THIS will be the occasion when the finding-out happens.

The worst part of the process (for me, anyway) is that there appears to be an unhealthy obsession with paperwork.  There’s nothing (in my view) more likely to stifle any spontaneity and naturalness in a class of students than someone who is following a lesson plan so prescriptive that every move, activity and behaviour is documented and timed. However, someone in the Department for Education and Skills, or whatever it’s called this week, has decreed that we need to document everything, and It Shall Be So. 

Armed with my seven page Scheme of Work, my  three page Lesson Plan (later deemed “lacking in detail” – give me strength!) I was about to sally forth and be observed, when the reason for the cat’s incessant mewing revealed itself. He was sitting on the stairs in a small cloud of feathers, tucking into a bird. Yeuk!

This was not good news.. I was planning to arrive at college a little earlier than usual, so as to prepare for my class and appear calm, organised and ready long before the appointed hour. I had NOT factored into my plans the extra time required to dispose of a dead bird and a duvet’s-worth of feathers, or to scrub the resultant stains from the landing carpet. The cat sensed my displeasure and did a runner. I arrived at college with enough time to spare, but a little warmer and more frazzled  than planned.

The college part went well. I’d organised a food tasting in order for the students to learn some new adjectives to describe tastes, textures and give opinions, and they seemed to have fun. The Italian students were particularly impressed with haggis, to the point that one of them willingly took all the leftovers home for his dinner!

Arriving home in the car, I approached the front door to find the house in darkness. I initially took this as a sign that TH had decided to have an early night, and made a mental note to remind him that my eyesight is not good enough to find the keyhole in such gloom.  Eventually, after several abortive attempts to insert the key in the lock, I succeeded, only to walk in and see TH sitting at the dining table bathed in candlelight. Ran a mental check…not my birthday or TH’s, too early for Mothers’ Day, too late for Valentine’s Day, Wedding anniversary next month…”We’re having a power cut”, said TH.

It was the strangest power cut I’ve ever experienced. After a candlelight search of the Yellow Pages (lucky I hadn’t thrown them away: who uses them any more when Google is so handy?) we found a number to call, and a recorded voice told us that we were in the same boat as most of the Greater Nowhere area.  A “Problem” had been discovered and was being investigated. This was especially odd, as our immediate neighbours’ house was bathed in light, as were several of the houses opposite. Neighbours were, despite the lateness of the hour, milling in the street, trying to see what was going on. One house opposite us, divided into flats, had power to the ground floor flat, but upstairs was in darkness. Another neighbour, driving home, had crossed a bridge over the M4 motorway just as a whole section of it plunged into darkness as the street lights went out.

Lessons were learned:

• -        A Kindle is rubbish by candlelight
• -        A gas hob is a godsend as long as it doesn’t take you over an hour to remember that you    can light it when there’s no electricity
• -         Never  hide your candles in the darkest corner of the house
• -         Torches are only useful if they contain batteries

TH and I retired to bed to sleep through the power cut, trudging upstairs like Mr and Mrs Wee Willie Winkie with our candles and glum expressions.

This morning, normal service had been resumed, but it seems we were without power for a good seven hours. The only positive thing was that, owing to my absence in Nowhere-in France last week, TH had eaten his way through most of the contents of the freezer!

Bringing down the Barriers- Part deux

And so to another,  rather less pleasant,  experience with the perimeter of my French estate. I feel I have been quite calm and collected about this so far, but as it is an Anglo-German conflict taking place on French soil, I am concerned that somewhere the social niceties of neighbourly etiquette have been lost in translation. Bear with me whilst I explain.

Last winter at about this time, I was undecided as to whether to visit Nowhere-in-France. I sent my neighbour an e-mail saying that I may or may not come, and she replied, suggesting that it might be in my interests, as the house next door on the other side had been sold, and the builders were renovating it. This, in itself, would have been a Good Thing, but apparently they’d opened new windows in the rear wall of this house. The rear wall forms part of our perimeter wall, and is (was) a beautiful feature, with five or six “niches de poule” along its length, where I’ve been able to sit summer plants in the niches. Until now. Apparently, the builders had broken through two of the “niches” and inserted my least favourite architectural feature: glass bricks.

I was anxious to see this, so booked my flights and went over. And, sure enough, two of the niches were indeed now filled with glass bricks, although they were still niches. It looked hideous, not least because the builders, without access to the wall on my side, had left huge globs and stalactites of plastic filler hanging down. And then I went into the barn where we keep firewood, to discover that they’d inserted a new beam through the wall, and great lumps of wall had fallen through onto the barn floor! I was later to discover that the neighbour on the other side had fared even less well, as the other end of the same beam had apparently made an appearance through the wall behind the wardrobe in their bedroom!!

Now, I may be being a bit too “British” about this, but frankly if my builders were about to wreak havoc on my derelict property and possibly impact or impinge upon my neighbours, I might just have popped round or stuck a note through their letterbox to explain and apologise in advance for any inconvenience. You know, just to get off on the right foot and all that! But not my new neighbours, oh no. They remained conspicuous by their absence.

Owing to the hole in my barn and the stalactite-and-glass-brick combo, I popped round ready to tackle their builders, who were on site. In fairness, they were pleasant and helpful, and within hours they’d come over and filled the hole in the barn wall, and done the making good on the glass bricks on my side of the wall. However, they were a bit slapdash with the latter, and wiped the glass off with the same cloth they’d used on the cement, leaving very little chance of light permeating through the cement-smeared glass. Peevishly, I decided that this was not my problem, and left it to dry. After all, it made the glass bricks less apparent….

One thing I did discover, thanks to the builders, was that my new neighbours were German. They would, like us, be using their newly-acquired property as a holiday home, and as the works were nearly complete, they were shortly due to arrive. On this occasion, I didn’t get to meet them.

Fast forward to the Spring of last year. Once more in France, I discovered that the house next door was finished. The man of the couple was apparently in residence. Under the previous occupant, the small front garden had had a set of double gates opening onto it, where a car could easily be parked. However, the new neighbours had walled in their whole garden, leaving them nowhere to park…except outside my barn door. Which was what they had apparently chosen to do! 

As it happened, on my list of projects for that trip was to repaint my barn door. This was going to be difficult with someone else’s car parked across it, so I popped round and rang the bell, and made my first acquaintance with my new neighbour, whose name I forget, but for ease and alliteration, I shall call him Herman the German.

I explained that I needed him to move his car, as I wanted to paint the barn doors. He was very accommodating, and agreed to do so. He also explained that he’d bought the barn next door to mine, and was intending to create his own garage. In the meantime (and I quote) “You don’t mind me parking here, do you?” I think that in French, this sort of thing is generally referred to as a “fait accompli”. It’s also the sort of question that can leave one  with the same dilemma as questions like “Do you still beat your wife?” as, however you answer,  it leaves you sounding a bit churlish unless you say “Oh, not at all, that’s fine”. I managed NOT to say that, but, wrong-footed, I failed to say what I should have said, which was “And now that you’ve got rid of your own parking space in order to make a bigger garden, I’m just supposed to let you park across my barn doors, right?”

I stuttered a non-commital reply, explaining (I thought) that it was OK for a while, but that we did expect and need unfettered access to our barn. And that, I thought, would be that. After all, they had bought a barn to make their own garage…

Summer….and I was back. Oddly, considering that the gate was locked, and that my house is surrounded by the now famous wall, I was surprised and puzzled to notice that the glass bricks were now sparkling clean. It appeared that my new neighbours had scaled the walls without so much as a word, and cleaned their windows from my garden. I was miffed and ready to enquire . H the G was still parking outside our barn, but almost as soon as I arrived, he left. Only to be replaced by other Germans, who parked their car – yes, you guessed – outside our barn. I realised that H the G was renting his house out as a holiday let, and had clearly told his tenants that it was fine to park there.  A red mist descended…

Thus it was,  reader, that on one of the hottest and most humid days of last summer, whilst the tenants were out, I purchased 3 fence posts, a length of chain and a “No Parking” sign, and set about reclaiming my own property. I should add that the ongoing presence of a car on my little bit of land had prevented me doing any routine maintenance of the patch, and once I’d erected my barriers I set about weeding and mowing the grass. It’s a tiny space, but you will understand how things were if I tell you that there were waist-high nettles and flattened grass, and that it took several hours and the removal of over nine wheelbarrow-loads of debris to tidy it up.

Fast forward to last week…H the G now has a spanking new garage door. It must, however, be a bit far for him to walk to his front gate, because he (or someone…but I know where my money is) has removed the 3 fence posts I erected, together with the chain AND the “No Parking” sign, and there are clear tyre tracks from a parked car on the grass. In my book, that’s a declaration of war. It’s taking the German “beach towel on the sun-lounger” stereotype way too far.  I’m starting to feel how Poland felt….

Whilst the builder was round to quote for repairing my wall, I got him to quote for a concreted-in post and a metal eyelet in the wall, to take the new, thicker, stronger chain that I will be acquiring to hang between them. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll get barbed wire and searchlights..

Bringing down the barriers....Part 1

 My stay in Nowhere-in-France was, on the whole, uneventful, as I reported previously. Despite the cold, our little house had stood firm against the elements and (more importantly) so had the pipework, despite some obviously frozen pipes which refused to allow cold water to reach the upstairs bathroom for the first couple of days. Unfortunately, however, not everything had stood firm…

Arriving just before dusk on day one, my primary concern was to light fires and stuff. As I could see my breath indoors, this seemed like a plan. The neighbours had invited me over for dinner. In fact, they’d even offered me a bed for the night, should I have felt that sleeping in sub-zero temperatures in a house where the heating had only just been reinstated was too much. They reckoned without my girl-guide levels of preparation and my newly acquired bargain electric blanket. I was, dear reader, prepared to tough it out. Once I’d wrestled the electric blanket and its eight miles of attachment cord onto the bed, over and around the mattress and anchored it firm, I was already feeling a LOT warmer. Time to venture out and around the perimeter of our tiny French estate. (Don’t get excited. I can reach the perimeter in any direction in about five brisk strides). 

Before I could start my perimeter-striding, however, there was a knock on the door, and a rather sheepish-looking neighbour waiting on the threshold. We did the French kissy-kissy thing and exchanged greetings, and then my neighbour said “Have you seen your wall?”. I had, in the sense that it surrounds our house and garden, and thus is quite hard to miss, but as I hadn’t yet done my perimeter tour, I had to confess that whilst I could vouch for the wall being where I’d last left it, I hadn’t “seen” it in any more detailed manner.

“Well..” he went on “I had a bit of an accident yesterday. We didn’t think it was worth telling you by e-mail as you were about to arrive, but come and have a look”. He led me to the wall, where I saw that what I’d taken for a dirty mark on my way indoors was, in fact, a large and very visible crack. The closer we got, the more spectacular it looked. Once we were standing outside in the road and examining the damage, it was clear that the top section of the wall was almost entirely detached from the bottom along about 8 metres of its length.

“I was reversing the tractor with the bowser on the back, and trying not to let it slide on the ice” said my neighbour “And I thought I’d just hit the kerb. I don’t usually bring the bowser over, but with the cold, I was bringing everything closer to the house.” He went on to explain that he thought he’d just clipped the tiles on top of the wall, but on closer inspection he realised that he had come perilously close to demolishing the wall entirely! I felt quite sorry for him, but we agreed that things could have been worse, he and his tractor had survived unscathed, and the wall could be fixed. As his brother-in-law is a builder, and we both share the same insurance company, he promised to deal with the insurance and get a quote for the repairs, and I know that all will be well.

I attach for your delectation and delight a few snaps…