Wednesday 22 September 2010

Hairdressing angst; bleak suburbia; messing about in boats

Rant for the week: prices of ladies’ haircuts. Have realised that I may be forced to move on from Alison Hair, the suburban pensioner-friendly salon at the end of my road that charges me a reasonable £21, as the lovely Lisa has substantially reduced her hours and the salon owner looks a tad too much like Bet Lynch for me to fancy booking in with her. This means though that if I want to pay less than £40 for a cut and blow dry I’ll have to either find another old-lady salon or cut my own hair. Ruth recommended Karin, the mobile hairdresser whom she and Helen have been using for the last 10 years or so, but although Karin seems a pleasant woman and does a good job on their hair, I fear her ditsiness and my anal-retentiveness would be an explosive combination (she seems to manage to get lost each time on the way to the house and sees nothing wrong with changing their appointment times at short notice, often to something patently obviously in the middle of the working day).

Visited four town centre hairdressers to get a representative view of the going rate, but was quoted around £40 by all of them, despite the fact that all I wanted was an inch off the ends. One of the salons I visited, Kirokara Hairdressing on Duke Street, apparently offer state-of-the-art Shiatsu massage chairs, but even that wasn't enough of a lure. They also have the cheek to offer something called 'Pamper Me Mondays' at only 'a credit crunching £80' – obviously some kind of merchant bankers’ credit crunch. Also the stylist I spoke to looked as though he had a gammy eye, but I guess that shouldn't be held against him. I ended up having a dry trim at Heidi's on Union Street (aka Smelly Alley) for £21, which covered not more than five minutes in the chair with a supremely uninterested stylist. Came home and booked in for the next available Saturday with Lisa, in a month's time. There's nothing for it but to be better organised.

Paid my first ever visit to South Ruislip last Friday to visit Sarah, a friend from PhD days whom I had not seen for about six years, partly because she’s been living in Paris until recently and I’ve been too slack to get around to arranging a visit. Had a great few hours’ catch-up though we had to postpone our planned evening drink in Notting Hill as Sarah had woken up with a frozen shoulder. From what I saw of South Ruislip it’s a rather bleak pebble-dashed suburb the centre of which seems to consist of a row of Chinese restaurants, tanning salons etc flanking the main road from the tube station. Sarah and her partner Chris are currently living cheaply in a house owned by a friend but I gathered that, being city people, there was some doubt as to whether they would be likely to be able to bear living there long-term.

Went to the Royal County of Berkshire (aka Newbury) Show on Saturday, for the first time in about 15 years. Watched the heavy horses doing their thing and then what I gather is called a pony scurry. We met up with Ruth’s aunt for lunch, who got us guest access to the Members’ Enclosure where we had hog roast. After lunch had a bit of a wander round to look at the animals, including llamas, pigs and chickens but managed to miss seeing the cattle so no marvelling at enormous bulls etc. I was hoodwinked into buying a far too large tub of feta-stuffed chilis, which I will now have to spend the next month or so eating.

Had the excitement on Monday of a trip down the Thames on Ray’s boat. He and his friend Alan have now completed a boat-handling course and took the boat out on its maiden voyage last week. Seems to be going well although I gather some things (e.g. rope throwing) take a bit of getting the hang of. They picked Ruth and me up from alongside Christchurch Meadows and we had a lovely pootle down the river to Pangbourne, where we moored up for a second breakfast, and then on to Goring, where we turned round just before the lock and returned to Reading. Saw quite a number of herons and Ruth claimed to have seen a kingfisher. We both had a go at steering – takes a severe degree of concentration at first but presumably gets easier.

As of today (Wednesday) Adam from AHL Electrical and two colleagues are thumping about in the house doing the various tasks that form part of ‘Electrical work 2010’. Still not sure I’ve bought the right bulb for the new porch light but hoping they will advise me. Corraling the bunnies safely has proved a bit of a challenge. Methinks they will go for a couple of days’ board at Reading Rabbit Rescue the next time we have any work done.