Q: How long does it take to RUIN MY LIFE?

Right. That is IT. I have fucking had it up to here and, worst of all, it's all my own stupid fault. I have a date tonight, my hair is looking lank, and I thought I'd go and get my fringe trimmed. My usual Japanese hairdresser doesn't work on Fridays, so I had another Japanese hairdresser.

"Freenge treeem?" she asks.
"Yes please," I say. "I was growing it out but I've decided I don't like it. So I want a blunt fringe, very chunky, taking in more hair than it was before." I explain what I mean by pulling forward some hair from closer to my crown. She nods and gets to work, cutting with precision until it looks just like I want it. Then she pins about half of it back and starts thinning out what's there. I wiggle uncomfortably.
"Please don't thin it out too much," I say. "I want it to be quite chunky. Blunt. You know?"
She nods and smiles and keeps going. And I sit there. I sit there like I'm fucking paralysed, all the while knowing that what she is doing is RUINING MY HAIR.
"You ok?" she asks. "You hot?"
"No, I'm not hot," I say, "just please don't thin it out any more. I want it blunt. Straight across. Not thin. The whole point of taking more hair into the fringe was so that it was thick. I have thick hair. Why are you making it look thin? Are you deaf? Why the hell are you working here if you can't understand WHAT I AM SAYING? STOP FUCKING SMILING AND NODDING." OK, I didn't say most of that, because I am polite and pathetic and PC. I tried to make my point though, and she nodded and smiled and then busied away doing the exact opposite, and I couldn't move because I am a moron.

And now my fringe is lank and pathetic and I hate it and no one will ever fancy me again, and I paid her the £3 she charged to trim it and gave her £1 extra as a tip and I will never go back and I will never have my hair cut again by someone who can't speak English, and yes, that's probably an awful thing to say and I am a keen supporter of global migration and immigration into the UK and diversity and variety of services and melting pots and tolerance but THIS IS MY HAIR we're talking about and it is serious.

Going viral

The arc of Wednesday was, well, less an arc and more of a diagonal plummet from a chipper morning, through an uneventful mid-section, down to an absolutely disastrous evening.

The day started off well as I crossed the road outside my flat and recognised my local LibDem candidate handing out leaflets in front of the tube station. She smiled at me as she passed me her flyer, campaigning about the proposed 82-week sporadic disruption to the Northern Line (a series of works that could be done in three weeks if it was tackled all at once), and I was able to smile back and say "I've already voted for you." She looked happy and I felt extra bouncy as I ran down the escalator, late comme toujours.

The remainder of Wednesday day trundled along OK - my world was pretty unremarkable, but outside was dark and gloomy for others, as Greece, then Portugal, then Spain's ratings were all lowered by S&P and the trading floor was briefly in a panic. Guys here are saying that this is, in many ways, far worse for the international economy than the Lehman's collapse in 2008, surely something Brown can point to in order to claim that Britain is not suffering uniquely at present. But then, Brown might not have a chance to address that in tonight's final TV debate because so many people are obsessing over him muttering, under his breath, in private, in a car, that one of his supporters was a bigot. I'm obviously not pushing for a Labour win, but if this really is a decisive issue in people's voting decisions then people need to Get A Grip. As Alan Johnson pointed out on the BBC this morning, there isn't a single one of us who wouldn't regret stuff we'd said if we were permanently miked up and broadcast on Sky. Freaking Murdoch. No WAY it would have aired if it had happened to Cameron.

So at 5pm the arc curved a little upwards as I journeyed home, a post-gym spring in my step once again, excited about having seen (and not heard) my first ever Toyota Prius Hybrid whisper past me in action, and keenly anticipating a relaxing evening at my lovely flat and a bit of a treat: I'd organised for a beauty therapist to come around and give me a facial. I'd paid £10 more than I have paid in the past for facials, but in exchange for those extra thousand pennies, I would be able to clamber off the treatment table, sit directly on my sofa and not move for the rest of the evening. It was an experiment about which I was most excited, in a zen way. And so she arrived. Tiphane (pronounced - go on, guess. You'll never guess. It's Tiffany) was pretty, curvy, bubbly, short, and struggling under the weight of all her potions and the folding table. But she set up within minutes and I was soon lying on my front, relaxing under the pressure of her satisfyingly penetrative massage and looking forward to her smoothing various masks and creams into my face, which would leave me glossy, healthy and unequivocally stunning.

Then, having asked me to turn over, she said, "I'll just be one second, I have to take some aspirin." Mid-rotation, I froze.
"Why?" I asked, forcing myself to sound sympathetic. "Are you OK?"
"Oh, I'm fine," she said. "I'm just getting ill." My eyes darted around awkwardly as, half-naked, I tried to position myself on my back and look relaxed while simultaneously freaking out.
"What kind of ill?" My voice surely betrayed my panic.
"Oh, you know, headache, sore throat... nothing serious," she said, breezily, as she plopped a soluble painkiller into her glass of water - MY glass from MY kitchen - and gulped it down as though it contained urgent life or death remedies that she needed without hesitation. And with that, she began the facial.

I went into a flat spin. Facials are not something that can be done at arm's length. They are an intimate process, involving continuous and precise application of emollients, unguents and balms, as well as macro-distance squeezing of blocked pores etc. Should one open one's eyes during a facial, one would see one's therapist inches away. Were one's therapist to be in THE MOST CONTAGIOUS STAGE of illness, one would want to run away very fast indeed. Immediately, I assessed my options. Holding my breath for an hour was sadly impossible. There were only three remaining courses of action: 1) ask her to don a surgical mask; 2) ask her to leave; 3) be brave.

And, since I am only forthright in type and am a wuss when it comes to confronting hairdressers and their ilk with the truth, I chose option three. For the next hour, as Tiphane smoothed and applied, I was continually caressed by her virus-riddled breath, the waves of infection landing every few seconds on my cheeks and forehead, and, during one particularly painful moment, being blown directly up my nose. All the while, I could hear her swallowing painfully. I tried to time my inhalations to fit with the rare moments while she wasn't blowing directly at me, but such coordination was often not possible. It was an unmitigated nightmare. I couldn't have made myself more likely to catch her cold if I'd spent the hour french kissing her. Far from calming, it was perhaps the most stressful experience of 2010 as I lay, prostrate and painfully aware that I'd just paid somewhere in the region of a small fortune to get ill. I was livid. LIVID I tell you.

Today I have been monitoring my health levels closely and seem to have escaped thus far, but when, as is surely inevitable, I catch her disease, there will be trouble, I tell you. Even as I've been writing this, I've become aware of a slight tiredness and back aching situation building up, but it could just be a mid-afternoon slump. Assuming the illness does set in, I don't yet know quite how I will get my revenge, but it will be something involving the SARS virus and a letterbomb. Maybe.

In other news, if you're even considering voting LibDem, please read this. Thank you.

No, I don't come here often, you cretin

Autumn has definitely hit London - it's cold outside, my office is arctic, my feet have frostbite and I am grumpy like a Disney dwarf on Day Three of cold turkey. I am in that mid-place between health and illness, where I am constantly convinced I can feel a sore throat coming on, yet one never quite develops, and I have an omnipresent headache looming on the horizon of my skull, not yet debilitating but enough to make me consider desperate measures such as having a nap on the floor of the loos, using my gym towel as a cover and my trainers as a pillow. What is definitely making my condition quantifiably worse is the ominous presence of tonight's activity, a singles event I am attending with Grania called Down With Dating, where there are ironic anti-date events such as Blind Hate and Speed Hating. I am feeling about as coquettish and attractive as a pre-menstrual sabre-toothed tiger so can say with confidence that the Hating part will probably be fairly easy for me. I do not, however, expect to leave the event overwhelmed by offers from possible suitors. Growl. Stupid me and my stupid gung-ho "Let's go to this, Grania, it'll be fun" stupid attitude. Growl growl growl. STAY AWAY FROM ME.

Bliss? I think not.

Yes, yes, I know. I should just drop it. If I was mature, I'd let it go. But I'm a 32 year old only child, and further to my mother calling me ignorant, my father has now - without directly jumping on the 'my daughter is a moron' bandwagon - kindly pointed out that it is "possible to be both intelligent and ignorant".

Now. Back up there, Sparky. I'm pretty sure I'm right here, but I'll just check on the off-chance... no, I'm right. Ignorance, as defined on The Internet, is "the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information, etc." I think it's fair to say that the Venn diagrams of ignorance and intelligence don't seem to have much intersection. I suspect my father would say, therefore, that it is possible for one to be intelligent in one field , e.g. about pop music of the late Eighties and early Nineties, while being ignorant in another, e.g. the Conservative party or the value of living in Putney. And maybe he's right. But I think it's fair to say that I've done enough research on both Putney and the Tories to know that I'm not going to change my mind about them in a hurry. And I know that the opinions I hold on both subjects are not unusual.

So - my mother thinks I'm wrong about Cameron, and wrong about Clapham. And I think I'm right. And we both think we are intelligent beings, and that the other one is fundamentally wrong. And we can't both be right - the Conservative party is either going to make Britain great again, or it's not; and Clapham is either populated by blinkered idiots or rammed full of Lovely Young Men I Should Be Marrying. So if we can't both be right, at least one of us must be wrong. But of course, ultimately there is no such thing as objective truth: our own truths are created by the unique circumstances of our surroundings. Anyone, therefore, who tries to impose their own truth on another is fighting a losing battle. My mother is right to like Clapham, and I am right to dislike it. Our decisions are the best decisions for us.

Still, it's hard to be called ignorant, especially by a parent, especially as an only child. Even if that child is in her thirties. I've put a lot of work into the conclusions I've drawn, from my atheism to the dress cut that best flatters my figure, to which boy to kiss, which party to vote for, which bus to take, and which borough of London to live in. I've made my choices for logical reasons. They suit me. My parents have made their choices too, and I may think they're wrong, but - crucially - I don't think they're ignorant. Believe it or not, I am of the live-and-let-live persuasion. My parents have drawn the same conclusions as most of the parents I know. They've made up their minds and they're sticking to them. And that's good - parents should be stuck in their ways. Contrary to what I wanted when I was 14, trendy parents who wear skinny jeans and smoke are actually not that desirable. Give me my mum's tapered trousers and my dad's 'I wear a tie while mowing the lawn' austerity any day. I love them as they are - but if they even hint that I'm ignorant again, I'll do a Macaulay Culkin and divorce them, and the only thing they'll know about me is what they read on this blog. See how they like them apples.

Right. I'm off to the theatre to watch 190 minutes of Brecht. Pray for me.

Vindication

OK, so the Claphamite turned up last night wearing... wait for it... I don't think there's a drumroll long enough... Hush Puppy loafers, khaki chinos, a white shirt, a navy blue, round neck, very-chunky-knit Ralph Lauren jumper with a red polo player, and NOVELTY CUFFLINKS. In Clapham.

You couldn't make it up. Except you obviously could because it is so unutterably predictable.

Since I wrote the blog entry about Clapham and Putney, my mother has called me 'ignorant' and 'immature' and said that it is wrong to judge people based on where they live, and that I will grow out of these opinions. The conversation ended with me being unable to speak due to the conflict between my immediate desire to launch a counter-attack so brutal that it would all end in tears and my certainty that that wouldn't be a Very Nice Thing to do to the woman who made me into the charming young lady you imagine before you today.

Suffice to say, I think she is wrong. Just to add fat to the flames, now I'm judging people on where they live AND what they wear. And for absolute clarity, I'd like the record to show that I WILL NEVER GROW OUT OF THESE OPINIONS. It is wrong to judge people on where they live or what they wear, which is why I went on the freaking date in the first place, and why I didn't run away as soon as he walked up to me. But, on this occasion, I could not have been more right. He was precisely what I expected. And we're not going to get married.

People love Clapham and Putney because they're safe and predictable. There are lots of other people there who think Just Like Them. They wear their Ralph Lauren to be part of a club, a club whose motto is 'I am safe, predictable, casjual, I like yachts and I'm pretty wealthy'. One day, I too may want to live somewhere safe and predictable. I don't have a problem with that. That's actually bollocks: I dread that day with every nucleus in my body. But the fact remains that it might happen in future. The key words there are the final two. My real beef is with anyone who chooses to buy property somewhere safe and predictable when they are in their mid-20s. And it is my right to have serious beef with that. It's not ignorant or immature to have beef with someone who shuts down from all life has to offer when they are still childless and free from almost every possible responsibility. As beef goes, that is some deeply patronising beef, sure. But it's NOT ignorant beef. Argh. I'm angry. I was very ANgry with my mother. [Deliberate misquote from a film, mum, don't worry your pretty lil' head further].

And breathe.

Rage

A couple of weeks ago, I received a notification that I had been tagged in someone else's photo on Facebook. The guy is in my choir and he'd been on our tour to the south of France, so I thought maybe there were some hilarious new pics of us online, cavorting around in hotel car parks and/or straightening unwilling people's very curly hair. Excitedly, I clicked the link in my email to view the photo. Seconds later, the Facebook window opened and there, in front of me, was this:

And I was tagged. As were two other girls from choir.

To say I went fucking ballistic is a gargantuan understatement. Obviously, from the outside, I did nothing. A tear may have pricked my eye. But in my head, I was sitting astride an H-bomb aimed at his house and whooping as I went down.

Now. I may or may not be fat. I happen to think I am not. In comparison to some people, I am a bit larger; I am definitely thinner than others. However, although I am not fat, I will freely admit that I am not 'thin'. No one would point at me and go, 'God, look at that thin girl.' The other two girls weigh less than I do. But even so, and I hope that neither of them would mind me saying this, they are probably not those foal-like girls who can gorge on pizza and beer for three weeks and not gain a gram either.

So what mind-bending drugs had this boy ingested to think that tagging the three of us on this photos was a good idea? To the best of my knowledge, there is not a single person alive in the Western Hemisphere who is not aware that it is absolutely, categorically UNACCEPTABLE to hint, to insinuate, to even BREATHE the idea that a girl is fat. OK, maybe, just maybe, it might be OK to call a girl fat when the girl in question is a) your best friend and b) so laughably skinny that to suggest that she is porky would be both ironic and hilarious. But, as I have made abundantly clear, and as is no doubt obvious to the 'wacky' individual who posted this picture and tagged our names to it, none of the three of us are in the category one might call 'laughably skinny'. And the guy certainly does not know us well enough to make a risky gag like that. He's eight years younger than me, approximately. What could he get out of this? It wasn't in a run of 'paintings that look amusingly absolutely nothing like people I vaguely know'. This was one lone painting in a series of otherwise completely run-of-the-mill, smug-rich-person-touring-South-America photographs. Just goes to show that you can have the most expensive education in the world and still be emotional pondlife. And yes, it'll be awkward if he's read this the next time I see him. But I am still gobsmacked at his lunacy and I had to vent. What. A. Dick.