No good reason, just this.

Yesterday was my friend Rosie’s birthday.

It’s 27 years since she was born, since she forced her way into the world. I imagine her tiny red body, indignant and hungry and not yet revealing that smattering of luminous golden freckles.

I just Googled her name, but not one of the 206 results has anything to do with her. I suppose 18 years isn’t really enough time to do anything that might merit internet attention.

My friends – our friends – back in Perth got together last night to eat but mostly drink and toast her and talk about her and breathe fresh oxygen into her memory for another year. I met Rosemary when I was six and she died when we were all 18 and every year that passes puts more time between us when we were with her and the versions of ourselves that we become every day since.

By that I mean, she’s still 18 and we’re 27. This also means that not a single one of the cells that I’m made of would have ever brushed against one of hers.

Each year (and not just on 23 November) we cross that not-yet rickety bridge of years and on the other side we find her but we find ourselves as well. I just wish I could have made that trip this year in the company of some of the oldest and sweetest friends I have.

This should tie up somehow but that would be less than the truth.

One (more) good reason to keep your big mouth SHUT.

Scene: Hair Salon, Bethnal Green Road

INT. Mid-morning. Girl with matted hair and sleep in eyes is sitting slack-jawed in the chair. Everyhairdresser stands behind speaking to mirror.

EVERYHAIRDRESSER: [brightly] So, what are we doing today then?

GIRL: [Silent, staring glassy-eyed at own resemblance to a hungover bloodhound.] …

EH: What kind of cut are you after?

G: [Mouth still gaping, saliva welling inside bottom lip.] Uh. Well. Shorter. A trim. Cut the… ends. And something, the, the fringe… [gesturing vaguely towards head]

EH: ….Uh huh.

G: [Suddenly pleased with self] What do YOU think I should do?

EH: [Bored now.] Let’s go for something a bit different, eh?

G: [Nods dumbly. Obediently pads over to sink for sweet relief from difficult questions and – O wonder! The head massage!]

The first constant in my infrequent trips to the hairdresser is that I never have an answer for that (very, VERY important, it turns out) question because:
1) I cannot stand hearing myself blathering ‘I’m thinking sort of feathery but not flippy, edgier – but not tragic… you know?’
2) It’s a Saturday. I’m hungover. Like I said.
3) Isn’t it their JOB to know the answer to that question? Would they be alright with the idea of going to a mechanic, say, and being asked ‘which bits do YOU reckon I should fix?’

The second thing that happens without fail at the hairdressers is that I do not banter. The pleasure to be gained from an uninterrupted hour of vacuous magazine reading vastly outweighs any joy I might get from an hour of where are you from/ going anywhere nice on holiday/ so do you own your house or rent?

I went to the hairdresser last weekend. I broke one of my rules. I couldn’t help it, he was so sweet and softly spoken, and he had the MOST beautiful tattoos of birds up his forearms. I couldn’t help it.

But I’ve learned the wisdom in abiding by the rules: when you are having an interesting conversation with your hairdresser, NEITHER OF YOU IS LOOKING AT YOUR HAIR.

Hence, I walked out with the worst haircut I’ve ever had – worse even than the lesbian rugby enthusiast cut I had at 18 – so bad that someone today told me I looked 1970s in a Martina Navratilova way.

Jay-sus.

In summary: shut the fuck up at the hairdressers. Heed my wisdom, for it is hard won.

One good reason to get good and sick

I’ve long thought that sickness is a way of forcing pauses. Cease and desist; your body taking out a restraining order on you. For the past few weeks I’d felt hollowed by all the stuff I managed to organise for myself – at the moment I have a full-time job and a part-time job, a night class I’m taking once a week, a close family member in need of lashings of love, a boyfriend who needs to be reassured of his significance in my celestial hierarchy, and a score of neglected friends in both hemispheres.

In the last month, my mum and stepdad, and my dad (separately), have all come over to London to visit. I also live with 9 people. Quiet and calm are pretty thin on the ground round my way.

I wasn’t surprised when my throat thickened and I got cold, bone-deep. My terrible confession: when I started feeling it, I thought, ‘thank Christ’. I know how terrible that is; how many people suffer horribly through sickness and how grateful I should be (am! honest!) for my usually rude health. But it was something I couldn’t argue with. Just. Stop.

So I stopped, inasmuch as I'm capable of stopping. I took a day and a half off work and stayed in bed, knitted, spent two hours on the phone to one of my truest friends, knitted, read, and watched 17 episodes of Green Wing. Come back, Mac, I love you.

When I attempted going back to work before my body had given its sage nod, I got my arse soundly kicked by it all over again (complete with a swollen face that made my eyes look like raisins on a clinically obese snowman), so ditched a weekend full of things I’d said I’d do.

I’ve never been so happy to be sick. Or so buoyed by feeling passable again.

One good reason to think long and hard before moving to the UK

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, Emerson reckoned, which is enough of a rationalisation for my starting a blog, abandoning it, and then grudgingly picking up the thread again. In my estimation, anyway.

So today: (more than) one good reason to hate the goddamned NHS.

Because after 4 years of living in this country, I only just now got my first bona fide doctor’s appointment. And I’m a citizen whose mother tongue is English. How, for the love of god, do refugees/ new immigrants/ people with minimal English ever manage this? My suspicion is that most don’t.

Because when you finally do get an appointment, the doctor looks confused about your symptoms and says, ‘Really? Well. No. I don’t know. You’re very strange.’ Comforting.

Because once you have the tests your doctor insists must be done right now, tonight, can you come back for 7?, the results won’t be back for 6 to 8 weeks.

Part of me is stupid grateful that at least there is some free healthcare, albeit nearly impossible to access, densely bureaucratic, and slow to the point of near-standstill. Part of me thinks it’s kind of Fawlty Towers comical, this bumbling British ineptness, this willingness of people to take a number, queue interminably, mutter under their breath about it. Most of me just thinks, if I should ever find out that I, or someone I love, has something serious that goes untreated or undiagnosed, I’ll be straight onto Google typing ‘molotov how to’.