Pudding

The little dog has it rough in the winter.  His walks are usually restricted to a forty minute pull into the village, with a bit of shouting at shadows the lurk in the darkness.  It's not fun for anybody, but it gives him the chance to have a sniff around, leave a few wee-mails and get as much mud on his paws as possible.

During the summertime and during winter weekends, however, he gets to run off-lead at the local woods. He meets his friends there, sometimes meets the odd weirdo who walks dogless, chases rabbits when he can bothered, rolls in fox poo.  You get to see the same dogs, which is quite nice.  And there's one particular one - a little black one - called "Pudding".  What a great name.  The next dog I have is going to be called sausage.


The butcher of Chesterfield
I used to get my hair cut at a proper salon in Chesterfield.  Sandy, my hairdresser, was lovely, but like most hairdressers, she never listened to a fucking word I said to her about how I wanted my hair to look.

What's wrong with these people?  If I want to look like I did when I was an 18 year old nerdy geek just starting out at university, that is how I want you to cut my fucking hair.  I'm paying you to do as I want, not as you want.  It got to the stage where the best thing about going there was the head massage while the girl was applying the conditioner, the rest of it was just trauma, followed by six week weeks of resentment.

And then there was the bloody conversation that you had to force yourself to endure while she was snipping away at the wrong bits of my thatch.  After attempting to fully engage in conversation for the first year or so, it got to the stage where I just gave up, certain that she must know the answers to her questions before asking them:

"Are you going out tonight?"

"No"

"Oh, I don't think I'm going out tonight, but I'll just stay in and watch Take me out - do you watch that?"

"No"

Anyway, for a number of reasons, I won't be seeing Sandy again.  I'd considered giving "Hair by Thomasina" a go - she's just a few doors down from where I live, but I figured the smells wafting in from the neighbouring chippy might be a little off-putting.  And there's the whole thing of striking up conversations with people who know where you live... which happens to be the house where her daughter used to live before it got repossessed.  The potential resentment from her should she discover this, is just too much of a risk to take; not so much with my hair do, which I'm not particularly precious about, more with having a pair of scissors inserted up my nose.

So, the upshot of this tale is that I let my sister cut my hair last night.  It's actually what I've been wanting for a while, give or take the mullet potential in a few weeks.  Little Con gave me a special sticker for being brave while she snipped away at me.  My sister had cut Con's fringe that night and so the little girl knew the fear I was experiencing first hand.


Back in the kitchen
After not eating for a few weeks, and certainly not cooking anything, I've started to venture back in there. It's not a huge amount of fun when you've nobody to share it with, even vicariously, but it's one step towards getting better.  Unless I don't cook chicken for long enough in which case I'll spend a few days doubled up in agony, but c'est la vie!