Why Erect Is Not Always A Good Thing.

Let's just say I am not having an Edith Piaf moment. I could not regret this haircut more.

I nearly have a heart attack when I spot myself in the mirror this morning.

"Holy shit," I say to Max. "What the hell happened to my hair in the night? Was I actually swirling around?"

"It's just sticking up a bit," he says.

Given the lack of gold stars, I don't know how he considers himself an expert on such matters, but I refrain from mentioning that. Instead, I start trying to resurrect my hairstyle, which takes a lot longer than you'd think.

"Brilliant," I say. "Now I'm going to have to go through all this every bloody morning."

"It does look much better short, though," says Max.

As far as I'm concerned, this is right up there with "You have a great body for your age" in terms of being a backhanded compliment. Why didn't Max tell me my longer hair looked terrible at the time?

My ostentatious sulking seems to have no effect whatsoever on anyone, though - probably because there's no-one at home to witness it. Josh and Max decide to go into town, while I go back to bed in an effort to stop the room moving.

When they arrive back home - after what appears to have been a diversion to the pub - I decide to risk returning to an upright position, and am rewarded with both good and bad news. The bad news is that lying down has made my hair stick up again, but the good news is that Dad has sent me another email.

There are more photographs attached but, yet again, there's no text to give me a clue as to the contents, so I call Josh and order him to open the files. You can't be too careful, after all.

As I put my hands over my eyes, just in case of a sudden vertigo-inducing attack of naked Thai brides or man-boobs, Josh starts double-clicking.

"Here we go," he says.

We both stare at the screen in disbelief.

"Fish," I say.

"Yes, indeed, Mother," says Josh. "Nothing gets past you."

"Very funny. But fishing? For fish?"

It's hardly a common hobby for a man with a short attention span, is it? But at least Dad's got a new interest. Maybe he'll decide to come back home now, and the Porn-Poon saga will be over. Stepmother Mark IV averted.

"Yes!" I say, and punch the air. Josh raises his eyebrows.

"Yes, what?" he says. "Since when do you like fishing?"

"I don't," I say. "But this means Dinah's right: Dad must be bored."

"He's probably just passing the time 'til he can get score some more Viagra," says Josh. "I wouldn't get your hopes up."

After yesterday's triumph of reality over optimism, this is probably good advice, but it has given me an idea: I wonder how Max would react to Viagra? You could probably extract it from my hair. That's definitely got a problem with frequent erections.

Some Things In Life Should Be Taken Much More Seriously Than They Are.

Argh, what made me do that? It's all Max's fault. He obviously likes women to look like bloody boys, as per the whole James Blunt thing.

I ask him how he thinks I should have my hair cut, before he leaves for work this morning. Admittedly, he's already running late and so doesn't have much time to look at all the pictures of hairstyles I put in front of him - but, honestly, this is a serious decision and demands careful thought.

He ignores all the photos I have put stars next to, and opts for something completely different instead. A messy crop.

"Are you sure?" I say. "I don't want to look like those women of a certain age who work on the cosmetics counters in Debenhams. Like they've jammed their fingers in the plug socket."

"It'll suit you," he says. "You're only small and longer hair drags your face down."

"That's gravity," I say, but he's already rushed out of the door.

I stagger off to the hairdresser's shortly afterwards, in the hope that a haircut will make me feel better, and I'm still feeling quite optimistic after I hand Gino the photograph.

"You'll be a new woman after this," he says.

"I do hope so," I say. "I've gone off the old version."

Things seem to be going quite smoothly until, half-way through the haircut, I have to lie down on the floor until the room stops spinning. It takes ages, and Gino seems pretty fed up by the time I can sit up again. I think I may have been lying in his way, but he didn't need to step over me with quite so much exaggeration on his way to the sink.

Anyway, he's definitely taken his revenge. Now I have no bloody hair left, and look exactly like an extra from Oliver!* You should be made to sign a declaration that you are of sound mind before changing your hairstyle.

And you should never listen to your husband, either. When I get home and take another look at the haircut in the photograph, I see that it is entitled, "For the mature woman." Thanks, Max. Why does "mature" make me think of decayed, rather than ripe?



*Oliver! - I'd rather look like Jack Wild than Mark Lester, just in case anyone's wondering. Though should a grown woman - albeit a headless childlike version - really look like either of them?

A Sentimental Promenade, A Mugging and a Very Bad Face Day.

God, do I never learn? Spend the morning going through Connie's hair magazines in an attempt to find a photo of a haircut that will make me look less like a corpse. Finally find a good one of Kylie sporting a cute shaggy bob. I take it with me when I go into town, and present it to my hairdresser who, after looking me up and down without comment, puts the picture face down on the counter and wields her scissors. I am very excited, as this may be the moment at which I finally recapture my youthful good looks.


An hour later, I am forced to accept that, while my hair does now resemble Kylie's, my face does not. I have therefore wasted my money, and am doomed to keep on being pole-axed with horror whenever I catch sight of myself in shop windows and unexpected mirrors. I walk home, lacking the enthusiasm to even pick my feet up properly, and thus have three embarrassing moments of the catch toe on paving slab, stagger, pick self up and pretend nothing happened type. (This happens quite frequently, due to my  insistence on keeping my head down whenever I am in the town centre, in order to avoid having to make eye contact with any of the usual suspects who might be passing by.)


When I walk into the house, I find a uniformed policeman sitting on the sofa in the living room.

"What's Josh done now?" I say. It's all too much. Or too little, actually.

"Josh?" says the policeman. "Did you know the muggers?" He's addressing Connie. And Russ.

"No, of course we didn't know them," says Connie, glaring at me.

I am too busy freaking out to care.

"Muggers? Muggers? What's happened?" Are all my family destined to be regularly set upon by madmen?

"Tell you later, Mum," says Connie, pushing me back out into the hallway, and closing the door in my face.


After Connie and Russ have finished looking through mug-shot albums, in which Connie spots quite a few ex-classmates, but fails to identify the perpetrators, the policeman leaves, and I finally discover what has happened. It turns out that Connie and Russ decided to go for a supposedly romantic walk at lunchtime - down the newly-created "Green Walkway," which is sited on an unused section of railway track that runs from Easemount into the centre of Northwick. What complete idiots. As with most regeneration projects, the planners ignored the fact that its location might as well be bloody Beirut.

They'd just passed the first bend, thus positioning them out of sight of the road, when they were confronted by three youths. (These were men, according to Russ, but boys, according to Connie.) They surrounded Josh and Connie, and then just stood there swaggering and looking like "prats" (again according to Connie), or "thugs" (according to Russ). Then they demanded that Russ empty his pockets. He complied but only had a couple of quid.

At this point, Connie insists that the muggers were about to give up and move away - until Russ said, "But she's got money!" and pointed at her. Russ denies this and says that Connie assaulted him with her umbrella in an unprovoked attack, which he ascribes to the stress of the moment. Connie responds that it was the stress of having such a chicken-shit boyfriend that made her lose her temper, and ends the discussion by pointing out that, by the time she'd finished hitting Russ, the muggers had disappeared.


Josh nods in atypical approbation of his sister.

"Good one, Con. That's what I told you!" he says, giving her the thumbs-up.

"What is what you told her?" I am incredulous that Connie would listen to Josh's advice on any subject.

'Best way to avoid being mugged in the street is to behave like a mad person," says Josh. "You should try it at work, Mum.