Archive for the 'stuff' Category

All wrapped up

Published
by
Debra
on 22 July 2008
in stuff
. 3 Comments

28/52

It’s amazing how fast removal men can turn your home into a stack of boxes and bubble wrap.

This is at the end of day one, after 3 guys turned up at 7:30 AM and set to work.

In the end, it the difficulty wasn’t stopping them from packing everything that wasn’t nailed down - there were some things we had to force them to take. “I didn’t think you’d want these,” one of them said about our barbecue, a saw and some wind chimes, “so I didn’t pack them.” We tried to persuade him to think again, but he left after lunch and we had to persuade someone else that we really wanted to keep them.

It’s kind of strange to see all your worldly goods reduced to a series of packages. A sobering thought. They are just things after all.

When the van was finally loaded the 30m3 capacity turned out not to be quite enough, and for a moment I thought they were going to leave the bed behind. But everything went and there was nothing to do but clean up and get out of there. When am I going to get over the fact that I didn’t feel anything much even then?

But there’s no point in being sad about something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. And it’s hard to get excited when everything is disappearing into storage. Already I miss my things, and it’s the stupid things I miss, like the lid that fits all sized pans that you can use even when frying (I need that a lot, it turns out), and the slide viewer. Not to mention all those books. I could do with my desk, only I have nowhere to put it so these days I work at the dining table. Whatever, they’re just things and I’m learning to get along without them.

But I wasn’t planning to talk about any of that. None of it is important. What I really wanted to talk about were the heroes that made our last few days in Amsterdam, not just bearable, but great.

over dinnerTanja, who made us dinner on Monday night. We sat in her flat and talked and talked while the light faded around us.

Sisi who rescued us by fighting her way through the boxes and bringing lunch from our favourite soup place.

Stewart, who we spent our last night in Amsterdam with and shared a good many laughs over beer and biefstuk.

And finally that moment came. On that last night when we were out with Stewart, we bumped into Tanja, enjoying a quiet drink with her daughter, and I suddenly realised that this was it, those moments of bumping into friends in the street, or in favourite bars, were gone. We’ll meet again, I’m sure of that. I’ll come to visit and she’ll stay with me in my new home one day. But those priceless moments of happening on each other by chance are gone for good and I suddenly felt the loss not of a city as such but of the people it contains. I think Tanja saw it too, and I gave her a hug and hurried away one of us dissolved into tears.

Damn you Amsterdam, just when I thought I was over you it turns out I will miss you after all.

Hair factory

Published
by
Debra
on 18 July 2008
in life and stuff
. 7 Comments

 27/52

Out walking in the city centre recently I was stopped by a woman who wanted to cut my hair.  She was on a training course and just needed two more haircuts to finish.  I wasn’t convinced by her offer of a free haircut. I used to go to the Vidal Sassoon training school and I had some pretty fabulous cuts, and never a disaster but hat was when I was a hard up student. These days I’m kind of fussy about who cuts my hair.

“Please” she said, “I need to do these cuts by the end of the week or I won’t pass the course. Don’t worry I’m a trained hairdresser so I won’t mess it up.”  She she wasn’t going to change it too much, “just tidy it up, the basic style is there.”  She seemed so desperate, and I gave in. My hair was in need of a trim anyway. It would be an interesting experience, maybe something worth blogging about. And what was the worst that could happen?

The next day there was an air of nervousness in the training school, but I’m not sure if the hairdressers or the clients were feeling it the most. Most of the students stood in a neat line by the hair wash section, while the clients sat in a long double row, divided by mirrors so that while I could glance at the women either side, I could only see the feet of the lady opposite. My hairdresser was dashing along, asking the  guinea pigs what they wanted and scrawling on their mirror “square layers” or “blunt bob”.  Then she saw me and rushed over, scrawling “Trish’s model” ( I got round layers though I didn’t find out until later). 

Trish set to work straight away and I spent the next hour people watching.

The problem with hairdressers is that they always start at the back when you can’t see what they’re up to.  When it finally dawned on me what she was up to, it was too late.

“That’s really short,” I said, resisting the urge to run out of the place right then.  But there’s only one thing worse than a bad haircut, and that’s half a bad haircut. Trish reassured me, it was going to have lots of curl and be really fabulous. And versatile.  There wasn’t a lot else to do but wait and hope for the best?  In the end it did look pretty good, sleek and shiny and with loads of movement.  But that didn’t last.

My hair isn’t destined to be straight, as much as hairdressers love to show off their skill with some crafty blow drying, within an hour it starts to go its own way. And I’ve never been good with a blow drier.

The next day I got under the shower and my hair did what it did. Or it tried to - there’s not really enough hair to get much of a curl, so it tries and then gives up with a lank droop. No amount of careful drying can get it to look anything like the photo, which wasn’t as good as it was before I had it cut, but it would be something. To be honest it’s been painful to look in the mirror ever since. I bought myself a hat so I could go out in public, and it is growing. Slowly.

In truth it’s not so much a bad haircut as a boring one. But I was happy with my hair the way it was. So if anyone mentions the words “Toni” and “Guy” in the same sentence again, I might not run in the opposite direction, but I will begin to walk briskly away.