The delights of aging

Getting old is great. I don't mean getting old in my half-arsed, whinging about grey hairs and worsening hangovers sort of way. I mean the getting your pension sort of old that my mum is currently rocking. On the downside: her husband has died and she's had her cancerous innards removed, but crikey she gets a lot of free jam... and unjammed fruit! Week in week out people pop by the house and drop off raspberry jam, a couple of pounds of gooseberries, indian chutney, crab apple jelly. And five thousand plums. The plums actually came via my Grandma. Where they came from before that I cannot be sure. Grandma remembered that they were given to her by a couple. She could not remember the names of the couple but was pretty sure that they didn't own a garden, never mind a plum tree. These two facts led her to the conclusion that they had snuck into someone else's garden and stolen all their plums. I ventured that the mystery couple might not steal plums just to give away but she wouldn't have it. The plum crumble was all the more delicious knowing that it was made from the booty (in the old-fashioned pirate sense of the word not the new bot-based sense) of fruity Robin Hood characters!

Haircut

What an utter disaster. I hate going to the hairdresser's. Absolutely hate it. The embarrassing conversation, the condescending criticism I receive when I admit I haven't had my hair cut for six months, the powerlessness of being at someone else's mercy - someone with scissors. Anyway, having avoided it for far longer than six months I had been thinking I should at least start thinking about considering maybe making an appointment. Then yesterday, hungover as can be (should I be that hungover from a two year old's birthday party? And, if not, should I be allowed to go to two year olds' birthday parties?)I thought 'what the heck' (yes, I was so hungover I was thinking thoughts in the style of American child stars of the fifties) 'I'm going to get my haircut right now'. Ordinarily I pay quite a lot to have my hair cut at a good salon where I ask for a ridiculously simple cut and they try to persuade me to challenge them and I have to reassure them that I want a boring cut - I just want the reassurance that comes with excess spending (not that I say that bit). So, I thought, this situation is ridiculous, if I just want something basic why not go to a basic hairdresser. Why not go to a hairdresser where you can just walk straight in and get it done. This is why I ended up in Supercuts.

I had no idea that they charge you by the length of your hair. How insanely ridiculous. The woman on reception asked me to untie my hair so she could see how long it was and 'quoted' me £32 to cut it. Barely less than I would normally pay to have it done. But stupidly I was too embarrassed to say that that was too much for somewhere with such crappy ambiance and ripped magazines so I just said 'fine'. Then I sat and I smarted and, when she said 'is this about the length you want it?' gesturing with her fingers behind me such that I actually had no idea where they were, I just said 'maybe a bit shorter?' still having no idea where that would be. There followed a liberating fifteen minutes of thinking 'this is amazing! For the first time in my life I am sitting in a hairdresser's and I don't give a shit! She can do what she wants and I really don't care!' Then shortly afterwards: 'fuck, that's not right'.

So now I look like a cross between Peppermint Patty and the boy out of Dazed and Confused. I saw Becca today and she kindly commented 'you look very French!' Sadly she meant in the 'school exchange circa 1989' sense.

The movies

I made two New year's resolutions this year. The first was to remove myself from facebook and myspace. Hurrah! I'm free from the terminal nosiness of looking to see who said what to whom and on which wall. Apologies to all those who I was in the middle of a scrabble game with. Easy escape for you though, eh? Seeing as I would have won. Ahem.

My other, somewhat more exciting, resolution was to go the cinema once a week. I realised I haven't been to the pictures much recently and have sort of fallen into a trap of only going to see films that I am absolutely sure will be good. As of New Year I will go to see any old crap that takes my fancy. And already I have seen some stinkers! First up I willfully ignored Philip French's comments about I Do: "Vaguely misogynistic, vaguely amusing, and wholly uninventive" and went to see it anyway. And a very enjoyable pile of nonsense it was too. I was sitting in the Tyneside cinema just feeling quite chuffed to be watching something so entirely fluffy and pointless. That was not so true of the astonishing cheese-fest that is I Am Legend. Does Will Smith get scripts delivered, read through them and say 'how about we add a bit where I sing along to Bob Marley in a daft voice, or maybe do a voiceover to Shrek?' Call me a traditionalist, but I don't think it was a good idea to combine rabid zombies and light-hearted comedy. Still, seeing absolute clangers is very much in the spirit of the resolution. And it's always good fun to see a film involving any element of tension with Sarah. She does some quite astonishing face hiding and body jerking in response to, well, a door opening, a dog barking, pretty much anything really.

Happy New Year

I started 2008 in a somewhat embarrassing fashion. After a heavy night of watching The Wire and feeling sorry for myself with a cold I woke on New Year’s Day and spent several hours trying to get myself up and out of my pyjamas just to make a trip to the shop for soup, lozenges, pop and other essentials for those with colds, such as potatoes. Eventually I gathered myself and, having made it to the shop on the corner, I picked two potatoes from the racks outside and went in. Oddly, considering it was New Year’s Day, the place was quite busy. It’s possible that it was full of people who had had a premonition that someone was going to do something astonishing in the shop. I tried not to disappoint them as my slidey shoes and the wet floor came together to perform quite a slapstick fall. My feet flew to the right and, as they slipped under the shelving, my head crashed against the aluminium post to my left. I believe that was around about the point when I shouted an offensive word while simultaneously thinking ‘So this is how I am going to die. A brain haemorrhage in Medina Foods. How disappointing.’ Then I came round a bit on the floor with my feet still stuck under the shelves and someone asking me if I was alright. Oh, and there were five children all looking at me open-mouthed. Possibly connected to the unsavoury word I had uttered while battering myself against the fittings. You will be glad to know that throughout my near-death ordeal I held the potatoes aloft so they were completely undamaged.