(Coat, H&M; skirt, Topshop; sweater, Primark (c/o my parents); boots, Sam Edelman; watch Michael Kors (both c/o Shopbop))
On Friday 13th, I was woken in the early hours of the morning by the sound of Rubin barking.
I opened one eye and looked around the room. Yup – pitch dark. It was either very, very late, or very, very early, and neither one of those times was one I wanted to be awake in, so I closed my eyes again and hoped Terry would get up to deal with whatever it was that was going down. And Terry obviously thought the same thing, so we both lay there for a few seconds in the dark, playing “Rubin Chicken”: the game in which we both pretend to be asleep and wait to see who will break first and get up.
(I am THE CHAMPION of Rubin Chicken, by the way. UNDEFEATED.)
Rubin barked again.
“SHUT UP RUBIN!” Terry and I yelled, almost simultaneously. (Whoops: cover blown!)
But Rubin did not shut up. In fact, he took the hysterical barking up a notch, and as I lay there and listened to him, I realised that this was not his usual, tentative, “Oh, hai! I can come into your bed, plz?” bark. It wasn’t even his slightly sheepish, “Dudes, I need to gooooo…” bark. Nope, this was his “OMFG, SOMEONE IS BREAKING INTO THE HOUSE AND WE ARE ALL ABOUT TO BE MURDERED IN OUR BEDS, EXCEPT NOT ME, BECAUSE I’M UP, BARKING!” bark. Oh, crap.
Terry realised this at the same time I did, so he threw back the covers and dashed out of the room, and as he opened the bedroom door, a second realisation hit me: Rubin was not barking from his usual night-time location, which is, for reasons too complex and yet boring to go into here, the hall outside our room. No, Rubin was barking from DOWNSTAIRS somewhere.
Now, it’s not totally unknown for Rubin to be downstairs when he’s not supposed to be. A few years ago, Terry constructed a low barrier (We refer to it as “The Perimeter”, as in “Quick: set up a perimeter - they’re not going anywhere!”) to keep him confined to the hallway when we’re out, but Rubin has recently learned that he can push the perimeter over if he really wants to, so occasionally we will return from wherever we’ve been and he’ll meet us at the front door, all, “Hai! Come on in, take your coats off, let me show you around!” He doesn’t normally do this during the night, though, because, well, he’s asleep, so for him to be barking his “INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!” bark, downstairs, in the wee small hours, made me wonder if there actually WAS an intruder, as opposed to, you know, someone sneezing in the next street, or a bird landing on the lawn, or one of the other non-events that tend to make Rubin lose his mind.
This suspicion seemed to be confirmed when, even after Terry had thundered downstairs to join him, Rubin’s barking continued at the same, hysterical pitch. What the hell was going on down there, I wondered? Why hadn’t Terry done something to shut Rubin up? Was he just standing there, watching him bark crazily, or… or had he run downstairs, been instantly killed by the INTRUDER, and now Rubin was barking at Terry’s prone body, while said INTRUDER crept slowly up the stairs towards me?
This seemed like the only possible explanation for Terry’s silence and Rubin’s continued barking, so I got shakily out of bed, and as I did so, I happened to find myself facing the bedroom window. The bedroom window which looks out onto our driveway. Our driveway which now had a POLICE CAR sitting at the bottom of it.
OH. MY. GOD.
You know how people say, “My legs turned to jelly?” Turns out that’s actually a THING. My legs almost gave way under me as I realised that this was IT: this was that moment I’ve been expecting all my life – the one where there’s a knock on the door on the middle of the night, and the police are standing there looking solemn, and saying, “You might want to sit down, ma’am, I’m afraid we have some bad news…” And in that instant, your whole life shatters, and nothing is ever the same again. It happens in the early hours of the morning of Friday the 13th, 2012, and even as you make your way along the hall, on legs that feel like they don’t belong to you anymore, somehow remembering to grab your dressing gown from the bedroom floor as you pass, because you figure you’ll want to be at least semi-clothed for whatever you’re about to be faced with, your mind is screaming REWIND, REWIND, and you’re thinking, “NONONO, I don’t want to do this. I was just lying there, sleeping. I was going to get up and go for a run, and do my work, and later maybe watch a movie and have a glass of wine. I don’t want to do THIS instead,” and you don’t even know what THIS is, but you know it’s going to be horrendously, unspeakably awful, because the police don’t knock on your door in the middle of the night for nothing, do they?
Halfway down the stairs, I paused. The living room was empty. Rubin was still barking at the door, and from the porch I could hear the low murmur of voices as Terry spoke to the police. I could just sit here, on the stairs, I thought. I could just sit here and wait, and delay the inevitable. And I thought, who is it? What has happened, and to who? And then I didn’t think any more, I just got up and I walked into the living room, picking up Rubin, and hearing Terry give a small laugh in the porch, and…
WAIT, WHAT?
A laugh? He’s laughing at something? The world isn’t ending?
And then I sank down onto the rug, and I sat there and I waited.
A few seconds later, the door opened and Terry walked into the living room. “Oh, hi!” he said brightly, as if it was the most normal thing in the world for us to be meeting in the darkened living room at this time of the morning, him fresh from a brief doorstep interview with the police.
“WELL?” I hissed. ”What THE HELL?”
“Oh, that,” said Terry nonchalantly. “Someone called them, apparently. It seems that our front door was wide open, so they had to come round and check everything was OK.”
And that, my friends, is why I began Friday the thirteenth, 2012, with one of the biggest frights of my life. Because Terry didn’t close the front door when he took the rubbish out last night, and our neighbour noticed and called the police, worried that we’d been murdered in our beds or something. And… let’s just say there wasn’t any sleep for either of us after that. I may actually never sleep again, because ever since that moment when I saw the police car parked at the end of the drive, my mind has kept circling back to What if? What if they really HAD been knocking on the door with some unthinkably awful news? And then I wouldn’t be sitting here, drinking coffee and looking at shoes on the internet, while I think about maybe taking a walk later with the dog.
I still feel like that moment is coming for me. But not today.
(And I’ll be checking the door myself from now on. Also: WINE. Bring it.)
P.S. I have to admit that, once I realised nothing awful had happened, I got a bit excited thinking it might be something to do with Nigel, the International Man of Mystery Next Door (Now into Year 5 of his unexplained absence). Alas, that particular mystery remains unsolved…
On the second day of Christmas, I dropped my iPhone while getting out of the car, and cracked the screen.
On the third day of Christmas, I scorched my favourite skirt while trying to iron it.
On the fourth day of Christmas, I backed my car out of a parking space and into another car: no one hurt, and just a scratch to the other car, although there is a bit of damage to mine. The financial damage, on the other hand… well, let’s all just keep out fingers and toes crossed that it’s not too bad.
I have spent the last 12 hours or so repeating, “At least no one was hurt, at least no one was hurt.”
I’m pretty much DONE with the days of Christmas, now, to be honest, but I’m thinking that if these things come in threes, that’s me used up all of my bad luck now, surely. Surely.
The fourth day of Christmas also brought these, courtesy of Sarenza.co.uk, whose Brand Ambassador programme I’m a part of:
Hopefully my luck is on the turn…
Tagged shoes
(This photo has absolutely nothing to do with anything.)
When I wrote about our Edinburgh ghost walk this weekend, I forgot to tell you how I ended the evening: by almost setting a restaurant on fire.
We’d booked a table at a restaurant near the Vaults, so that when our tour was finished, we could just hop across the road and grab something to eat. When we arrived, though, we were told that the restaurant’s credit card machine had broken down, so it was cash only. Well, no problem: as usual, neither of us had any cash on us, but there was an ATM just a couple of minutes away, so Terry headed off to get some money while I began the lengthy process of divesting myself of all of my many layers of outerwear. Because it was October, and we’d be walking around outdoors at night, you see, I’d assumed it would be freezing, but, of course, last weekend was actually unseasonably warm, so by the time I arrived at the restaurant, I felt like I was fresh out of an oven.
This feeling only intensified as I sat down to take a look at the menu. In fact, as I scanned through it, I became more and more convinced that I could smell something burning. Given the terrible tales of FIRE we’d just heard in the Vaults, and my overheated state, I was pretty sure the “something” must be me. “I knew it!” I thought feverishly. “A demon has totally followed me out of that haunted stone circle, and now I’m about to spontaneously combust. Why does this sort of thing always happen to ME?”
But it wasn’t me that was burning.
It was my menu.
My menu which I had somehow managed to dip into the candle on the table, and which was now ON FIRE: and I’m talking huge flames leaping towards the ceiling, probably going to burn down the whole restaurant if I don’t do something about it NOW. THAT kind of “on fire”.
What I chose to do first of all, was to shriek loudly, as if I was being attacked by the fire. It was completely involuntary, and, yes, quite embarrassing actually, now you come to mention it. Then I had to throw the menu to the floor and STAMP on it to get the flames out. GOD.
I thought I’d gotten away with it. The restaurant, you see, was a kind of T-shape, and it so happened that the other patrons, plus the waitress, all happened to be in a part of the T which my table wasn’t visible from when the burnin’ happened. So I sat back down and tried to read my now-burned menu, thinking no one would be any the wiser.
A few seconds later, however, Terry arrived back from the ATM and confirmed that he had noticed the smell of burning as soon as he’d opened the door, and had known instantly that it would have something to do with me. I would take offence at this, but, let’s face it, I have form with this kind of thing, having previously set a flower on fire in another restaurant.
(And then a minute later, the waitress appeared and offered me another menu, presumably having witnessed the whole thing. They probably have it on CCTV or something.)
That’s why I will now answer to the name “The Firestarter”. Or, if you prefer, “Twisted Firestarter”.
It’s a good job I don’t smoke, eh? Just imagine the trouble I’d get into THEN!
(Also: once I’d finished telling Terry this sorry tale, his first question to me was “Did you take a photo of it?” I really need to blog less…)
So, I continue to be a walking disaster area as far as my clothes are concerned. In fact, in the past two weeks, I have managed to totally destroy three pairs of jeans/trousers. They were my three favourite pairs, of course. OF COURSE they were. Well, I wouldn’t have accidentally ruined that ancient, worn out pair I only keep around for doing the gardening in, would I? If you’d said to me, “Amber, we’re going to have to destroy three pairs of your pants now, and you have to pick which ones it is,” those three would seriously have been the LAST ONES I’d have picked, not even joking. (I’d also have HATED you for doing that to me, by the way. Because really, how twisted can you be?)
The first pair of pants to meet their end was a pair of chinos. Now, I loved those chinos. I loved them like a child. I’ve had them for… two years? Three years? YEARS, anyway. I have successfully kept them alive all that time, even although they are very pale, and being very pale does not bode well for you if you are an item of my clothing. I was pleased they had survived, though, because they were The Best Chinos In All the Land. You might think you have a better pair, but you are wrong, because these were the best chinos, and we will never see their like again. I spent YEARS searching for these chinos. Every pair I found was too big, or too small, or too long, or too short, or too high waisted, or made of some horrible, thin, crackly material that made me want to gag. These ones were perfect, in every way. They were The Bomb. I wore them constantly. Well, almost constantly. They weren’t just trousers: they were MY BEST FRIENDS.
Three weeks ago, though, I pulled on my best friends, and noticed a weird, white mark on the hip. Thinking it was probably toothpaste or something (I, er, quite often dribble toothpaste on myself. It’s one of my endearing quirks.) I went to the bathroom and tried to remove the mark with soap and water. It wouldn’t budge. OK, no big deal: I removed the pants, threw them in the wash, and thought that would be the end of it.
But it wasn’t.
When I took the Best! Pants! Ever! out of the wash, the mysterious white mark was still there. I was not amused. I washed the pants again. And again. Over and over, I washed the pants. The Mark didn’t budge. So I got some of those stain-removing products and I tried them. No dice. In vain I scrubbed at the mark. In vain I put the pants through yet another spin cycle. Nothing worked. And then, finally, after multiple scrubbings and washings, I realised that I’d scrubbed so hard at The Mark that I’d scrubbed right through the fabric and created a hole.
My best friends were dead. I mourned them. Oh, how I mourned!
 RIP, chinos (No, I couldn’t patch the hole. What am I, a farmer?)
Then I put the pants back in the wardrobe (Because I couldn’t bear to throw them away. THAT’S how much I loved them) and I pulled out my Favourite Red Jeans – also known as my ONLY red jeans – instead. I pulled them on, and…
… they had a mysterious white mark on the hip.
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!
At this point I may have lost my mind just a little. I examined The Mark closely. I had no idea what it was, but I decided to call it The White Mark of Death. And so my cleaning trials began again, complicated this time by the fact that the jeans were a) bright red and b) expensive. I suspected that too much washing would take the dye right out of them, so I had to proceed with caution, trying to treat only the area with The Mark.
Again, nothing worked. And now I had started to worry that if I scrubbed any harder, I’d lift the dye right out of the area around The Mark, and be left with both The Mark and a huge, faded patch. I wanted to dye die.
 RIP, red jeans! So I put the red jeans aside, and I reached instead for The Best Green Jeans In All the Land.
Oh, the trials I went through to get these jeans. You see, I ordered my normal size. And they came, and I thought they seemed too small. So I sent them back, and I ordered the size up. And they came, and they were too big. So I sent THEM back, and I RE-ordered my usual size. And they came, and… were perfect. I loved them. I loved them for roughly two weeks: right up until last night, at which point I happened to glance into the mirror in the bedroom, and there it was.
THE WHITE MARK OF DEATH. On the knee of my beloved green jeans. That I had known for only two short weeks. That I had loved, and, sadly, had lost, because folks, that white mark? Is totally BLEACH. Or at least, I’m assuming it is: just prior to the discovery of the mark, I had wiped down some of the surfaces in the bathroom, and it would appear that in the two minutes it took me to do that, I managed to destroy the jeans. I guess I have to also assume, in the absence of any other explanation, that the other white marks were also bleach: honestly, I could not feel stupider if I tried.
So, now, the search is on, because, of course, all of the items in question are now sold out in my size, with the exception of the red pair, which are too expensive for me to replace right now. You all know how hard it is to find jeans that fit properly, right?
I hate myself. Wish me luck…
(Oh, and I’ve just remembered: when we were in San Francisco this summer, I ruined a pair of blue jeans by dropping MAC ProLongwear lipstick on them. I can confirm that that stuff DOES NOT COME OFF. Ever. Or, it does, but only with eye makeup remover, which also took the blue dye right out of the denim, leaving me with… THE WHITE MARK OF DEATH. GOD. So that’s four pairs of jeans lost this summer alone. I’m now down to just those pairs that are too old/badly fitting to be seen in public, but which I’ve kept around anyway for… I don’t know why. In other words, this summer I have destroyed almost ALL of my casual clothes. Looks like I’m going to be even MORE overdressed than usual for the foreseeable future…)
P.S. Just thought I should add that I do not dress up in my favourite jeans to clean. I wear old clothes for “proper” cleaning, but if it’s just quickly wiping something up or whatever, then yeah, I have to admit that I’m too lazy to go and change my clothes, only to have to change back two minutes later. I will now, though, obviously: lesson learned! (I hope.)
Every Monday, Terry and I have dinner with my in-laws, and we normally take Rubin along with us. Last Monday was no exception, and, as it turned out, my brother-in-law and nephew were there when we arrived, and my sister-in-law turned up a bit later with our niece, so everyone was talking and laughing, and Terry and I lost track of time slightly.
As it turned, out, however, time wasn’t the ONLY thing we lost track of.
As we stood up to leave, we heard the sound of an ice-cream van pulling into the street. Terry is pretty much addicted to ice-cream, so we quickly gathered our things, said our goodbyes, and I got into the car while he ran across the street to buy himself some ice cream.
Unfortunately, most of the kids in the street had the same idea, so there was a line. Terry joined it, and I pulled out my phone so I could pass the time checking my email and Twitter, and basically messing around on the Internet. I’d been doing this for a few minutes, when I glanced up and saw my mother-in-law come out of the house, her arms waving as she tried to get my attention. She seemed to be trying to tell me that I’d left something in the house. Hmmm.
Now, me leaving something would not be AT ALL out of the ordinary. I leave things. It’s what I do. As soon as I get home after a visit to my own parents, the first thing I do is to check my email to find out what I’ve left behind THIS time. When we get home from Terry’s mum’s, meanwhile, we’ll regularly get a phone call a few minutes later, to say that Amber has left her coat/bag/phone/wallet/giant messy bun head/brain there. I’ve been doing this kind of thing my whole life long. When I was in school, for instance, the bell would ring, signalling the end of classes for the day, and I would often just stand up and walk out, leaving my bag, coat and EVERYTHING ELSE I OWNED behind me.
This time, though, I was sure I was good. I was wearing my jacket, my handbag was on my knee, my phone was in my hand. I wracked my brain, trying to think what I could possibly have left behind. I mean, the only other thing we’d had with us when we arrived was…
“THE DOG!” shouted my mother-in-law. “You’ve forgotten the dog!”
And we had.
We had got up, put on our coats, and just walked out, leaving Rubin behind. Oh. My. God.
Just to set your minds at rest, Rubin was totally unperturbed by this. I mean, he’s stayed with my in-laws lots of times when Terry and I have been on holiday, and he sees them every week, so he feels totally at home there. He also tends to eat much better there than he ever does at our house, which is probably why, rather than following us to the door, he simply remained where he was, hoping that, sooner or later, one of the people present would drop a morsel of food on the floor and he would be able to swoop in and get it. So he was fine.
Even so, though, people, even so: WE FORGOT WE HAD OUR DOG WITH US.
And this, my friends, is why Terry and I have never tried our hands at parenting.
The night before we left for California, I dyed my hair orange.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re all, “But her hair already IS orange? Should I say her hair is orange? Has she not noticed?”
People, I mean ORANGE.
No, MUCH more orange than that. Seriously.
This was the culprit:
Wella Lifetex Color Reflex Mask in Red. Naturally, the company discontinued it as soon as they knew I liked it, but not before I’d managed to squirrel a tube away in preparation for a time when I’d want my hair to look slightly redder than it does naturally.
That time came, as I said, the night before we left for California.
Now, as most of you know, my hair is naturally red, and I never really dared to tamper with it for fear of… well, for fear of it turning BRIGHT ORANGE, basically. I do, however, like to dabble in that small area of haircare – and trust me, it’s a VERY small area of haircare – which consists of products designed specifically for red hair. Wella Lifetext was one of those products: it’s basically a conditioner, but it’s a conditioner designed to “bring out the red” in your hair, and make it glossier, prettier and REDDER. It does this by depositing a small amount of colour every time you use it.
Now, I’d used this before and loved it. It did, indeed, make my hair shinier, and it did, indeed, “bring out the red”, although, honestly, it did it in such a way that only I would notice the difference. And it washes out after about three shampoos, so I figured it was safe even for me to use. Ha!
Because the product had been discontinued, there was only a small amount left in my one remainng tube, but it was just enough for one application, so I slapped it on with gay abandon, and then went about the business of packing my suitcase.
This was my fatal mistake.
I got so wrapped up in the process of adding and removing items from my suitcase that I left the product on for longer than the 2 – 5 minutes advised on the tube. Quite a bit longer, actually.
When I finally rinsed it out?
Orange.
“Whoops!” I thought. “Went a bit too far, there! I will shampoo it again!”
So I did.
ORANGE.
By this point, it was around midnight. Our flight was early the next morning, which is why I was washing my hair last thing at night: I figured if I did it then, and just tied it back to sleep in, I wouldn’t have to bother washing it in the morning, and could have a few more precious minutes of sleep. I’d finished packing my suitcase by this point, and had even laid out my clothes for the next morning, so all I had to do next morning was drag myself out of bed, have a quick shower, throw on some clothes and makeup and go.
I looked at the hair. And you know, it was late, and it was dark. I was looking at it under artificial light, and we all know how much THAT can change the appearance of things. I can actually look not too bad in artificial light, for instance, whereas in harsh daylight, I look like a hag.
“I don’t think my hair is any more orange than it is naturally,” I told myself. “It’s just the light. It’ll be fine in the morning.”
So I tied it up, set my alarm, and went to bed.
In the morning, things went mostly according to plan. The alarm went off, I sleptwalked to the shower, and then slepwalked back into the bedroom, where I positioned myself in front of the mirror to let down my hair, all Rapunzel-like.
ORANGE.
Like, REALLY, REALLY ORANGE. I’m talking OMGORANGE.
It was a very obviously artificial orange: the type of colour that just does not occur in nature.
“OMFG!” I said.
Well, I was in quandary. I had just over 20 minutes before the taxi was due to arrive to take us to the airport, and my hair was bright orange. Also, Terry, who plans our trips with the precision of military manoeuvres, was in the vicinity, and would NOT be pleased to know that The Schedule was about to be disrupted by my orange head.
I tried to pile The Hair on top of my head, thinking that the less you could see of it, the more natural it would look.
Nah.
It actually looked a bit worse, to be honest.
My mind was made up. Ripping off my dressing gown, I ran for the bathroom… only to get halfway down the hall, realise I had no time to wash and dry my hair before the taxi arrived, and turn and run back to the bedroom.
I had repeated this move about five times, in a frenzy of indecision, before Terry noticed me running up and down the hall naked, and wanted to know why.
“MYHAIRISOMGORANGE!” I wailed. “I need to wash it! I need to wash it NOW! There is time for me to wash it! Say there is time for me to wash it!”
Terry grabbed me by the shoulders and looked me in the eye.
“You’re not washing your hair,” he said, speaking very slowly and quietly, and actually, menacingly. “We. Will. Miss. Our. Flight. If. You. Start. Dicking. About. With. Your. Hair. Now. Understand?”
I nodded, mutely, and meekly headed back to the bedroom to get dressed.
And then, as soon as I heard Terry head downstairs to take the cases outside and wait for the taxi, I ran for the bathroom, locked the door behind me, wrenched the showerhead off the wall and, bending over the bath, SHAMPOOED THE HELL OUT OF MY HAIR.
And there was absolutely nothing Terry could do to stop me.
I was still blow-drying it when my parents arrived, closely followed by the taxi. It was a close-run thing. But by the time we got on the plane, my hair was – mercifully – free of TEH ORANGE.
I’m sure Terry will start speaking to me again soon.
Tagged hair
(Dress, Bettie Page; Shoes, Zara (last season, out of stock)
I’m back. And rather than get straight into the OMGDEPRESSION I feel at being back, I’m just going to go right back to the start of my trip, and systematically bore you with all of my stories and photos. Then, when I get to the end, I might just do it all over again, and in this way I will relive my holiday over and over again, right up until the next one. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I’m starting off with the the trip from London Heathrow to San Francisco, during which I managed to clock up the following Random Acts of Stupidity:
# of times I left my “baggie” full of liquids at security and had to run back for it, with just minutes to spare before our flight - 1
# of times something leaked inside said “baggie”, soaking the contents of my handbag – 2
# of times I threw my Kindle across the aisle of the aircraft and almost into the lap of the gentleman sitting across the aisle from me – 3
# of drinks spilled over Terry’s crotch – 1
# of times I caught my watch strap on my bag, causing it to drop off my wrist - 3
# of times this happened before even leaving Edinburgh – 3
# of times Lady Gaga disrupted the entire cabin, courtesy of an alarm on my phone which I’d forgotten to disable - 2
# of contact lenses lost during the flight – # 1 (subsequently found stuck to my knee, a dried-up husk of a thing. The contact lens, I mean. Not my knee.)
# of times I lost my Liz Earle Superbalm during the flight – about 27, culminating in it being lost for good just before we landed.
# of times I complained about this – 92
And finally, having reached San Francisco, the # of times I failed to heed the warning presented by this notice in the entrance to our hotel bathroom, and almost fell flat on my face?
About 1,473.
In contrast, the flight back from LAX yesterday was pretty uneventful, save for two things:
1. The aircon unit that started leaking onto my head halfway across the Atlantic. Trust me, when you’re a nervous flyer, the very last thing you want as you sit there trying to get some sleep on the plane is to feel a steady drip, drip on your head, and to think, “Oh, it must be raining outside… wait… CRAP!”
2. The fact that I almost caused my family to miss our connection at Heathrow, due to the Kurt Geiger shoe sale in Terminal 5. Sorry, family. (It was a REALLY good sale, though…)
I do, of course, have many (many, many…) more stories and photos to share, but I also have laundry to do, sleep to catch up with, and a lot of whining about being back home to get through, so for now I’m just going to leave you with these random photos of my new Bettie Page Captain dress, purchased in San Francisco, and the Hollywood sign, neither of which have anything to do with this post at all. Enjoy!
(He’s got his paws up. Because he was born this way, baby.)
What you see looking out from the sign.
And what you see looking back.
(Yeah, I told you there would be a LOT of photos…)
Tagged bettie page, california, dresses, flying, shoes
Last Friday, as I’m sure you all know, was the day of the Royal Wedding.
What you may not know, but which was actually more important in our house, was that it was also the day my car was due to have its M.O.T. (Which is an annual inspection, for the benefit of those of you outside the UK, who don’t understand my abbreviations. I actually don’t know what M.O.T. stands for either, to be perfectly honest, but I expect approximately 91 of you will tell me as soon as I post this, so I’m not even going to bother Googling it.)
Well, Terry and I watched the wedding, and afterwards found ourselves with just a small window of opportunity in which we had to drop off the car and walk the dog before it was time to… well, before it was time to watch the William and Kate movie on TV. No, I can’t believe I just admitted to that either. Look, I don’t know what happened to me on Friday, OK? It was strange: I didn’t think I was even interested in the wedding beyond a general “I wonder what her dress will look like” curiosity, which I felt sure would be satisfied by looking at the photos online. Next thing I know, though, I’m sitting in front of the screen shouting to Terry, “QUICK! QUICK! YOU’RE GOING TO MISS WILLIAM AND HARRY ARRIVING!” And then I’m all, “Actually, I think I will also watch this made-for-TV movie about the happy couple. Rule Britannia!” What happened to me? We may never know.
Anyway, in order to solve this little dilemma of ours, we came up with a cunning plan, in which we would both go to drop off the car, and then we would walk back from the garage with the dog. So off we went.
Well, we got to the garage, and Terry went in to give them the car keys, while I waited outside with Rubin.
Now, I was wearing a 50s style dress that day. It wasn’t the one in the photo, which is here purely for the purpose of illustration, but it had a similarly big skirt, which was swishing around in the gentle breeze. The problem with that, however, was that as soon as I got out of the car, that “gentle breeze” turned into a full-on GALE. No sooner had I taken up my position outside the reception area of the garage, than a huge gust of wind came along and…
… blew my skirt right up over my head. And I DO mean RIGHT UP OVER MY HEAD. For a few horrible seconds I was naked-but-for-my-underwear from the waist down, and blinded by acres of fabric. Awesome!
“This totally isn’t what happened to Marilyn Monroe that time,” I thought, annoyed, as I fought my way out from inside my skirt. “Why, she just put her hands down, gave a big smile, and looked positively charming. And here I am, half-naked in a car park!”
It took me a freakishly long time to free myself from my fabric prison. Once I was released, I smoothed down my hair and glanced feverishly around the area to see if anyone had witnessed my disgrace. There were a few people picking up cars, but no one was actively pointing and laughing, so I chose to let myself believe that I had managed to get away with it, and had only flashed Rubin. (Who has seen it all before, to be completely honest with you.)
“Well, Rubin,” I said, straightening up from the defensive, crouching position I had assumed in my shame, “THAT was lucky!”
“Not really,” said Rubin. “Because your bare butt is on show RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND.”
No, he didn’t. Because he’s a dog, remember? Dogs can’t ACTUALLY talk. But sure enough, my nether regions did feel somewhat…breezy. Almost as if I was out in public in nothing but my knickers, actually.
I glanced down, anxiously. No, it was fine: my dress was primly covering my knees. And yet…
I turned my head and looked at my right shoulder. There, sitting proudly on top of it was THE HEM OF MY DRESS. The hem of my dress that was ON MY SHOULDER because it had blown up and got caught there, and while I’d managed to get the front of the dress back down again, I had not been so lucky with the back.
Oh, and my OTHER shoulder? ALSO DECORATED WITH DRESS.
So, you’re thinking my humiliation was complete at this point, aren’t you?
Readers, my humiliation was not complete.
Because when I turned round to whisk that dress down from my shoulders, I realised I was standing with MY BACK AGAINST A WINDOW. The window of the garage reception, to be exact. The reception that was full of mechanics and customers and God only knows who else.
And THEN my humiliation was complete.
I’m not sure if anyone saw me. Terry was inside the reception at the time, and he didn’t see my knickers framed in the window, nor did he hear gales of laughter sweep through the room. We’re assuming I got away with it.
But… but… not ten minutes after we got home (me waddling along with my skirt clamped firmly between my knees), the garage called to say we could come and pick up the car.
It’s never been finished as fast as that before. AND it passed the MOT, which I wasn’t really expecting. Suspicious? I think so.
And that’s why I’m wearing jeans all the time from now on.
EDIT: For those of you who asked, the dress in the photo is from River Island!
Readers, there’s really no easy way to say this. In fact, because I am slightly afraid of you all, and know you’ve always reacted with horror to my “Hey, I could totally get a fringe!” suggestions in the past, I actually wasn’t going to say anything: I thought I’d just avoid posting photos of myself for a few months and no one would be any the wiser. But my clever plan was foiled, and it was foiled by my very own Shoe Challenge, which started last month and which requires all participants to take photos of themselves and post them on the Internet. Now, what kind of asshole comes up with a rule like that, eh? Oh. That would’ve been me. Excellent. I hate myself.
Of course, I could have simply taken advantage of the “you can crop out your head if you want” clause, but I’ve never done that before and people would notice and ask why, so I’m just going to come clean. I’m going to say this very quickly and then I’m going to run away and hide:
ItriedtocutmyownhairandIscreweditupsoIhadtogotothesalonandnowIhaveafringe.
And now, a short intermission, during which you can all shout at me:
<short intermission, shouting >
So, I’m not even going to TRY and defend my latest act of complete and utter idiocy. I did it because I am stupid, and that’s really all there is to be said on the matter. Because I am me, though, and I normally like to say much, much more than is ever necessary about any given subject, here is my explanation:
“I am stupid. Like, ‘If I’d been born a couple of hundred years ago, I probably wouldn’t have survived childhood’ stupid. Seriously.”
Wait, I meant my OTHER explanation:
Well, see, you know. I had been bored with my hair for a while. It wasn’t that it was a bad cut (Although obviously at least one person will email me now to say that yes, it was): it was just that I’d had it since I was about 14, and I was well and truly sick of it. The problem with that, though, was that over the last year or so, my anxiety about having my hair cut has only intensified. I mean, I know I always joke about hating going to the salon, but seriously, folks: I hate going to the salon. So I just stopped going, other than when I felt it had become unavoidable. And even although Iwas bored with my hair, I could see no way of ever changing it, because every time I DID have it cut, I was so afeared of The Return of the Mullet that I would just have it trimmed and then leave looking exactly the same as when I arrived. I knew I was being silly about it. “Amber,” I told myself, “Ain’t no point going through your ENTIRE LIFE with EXACTLY THE SAME HAIRCUT, just because you’re too scared to change it in case you hate it. Even although every time you have changed it, you’ve hated it.” But I WAS too scared. And I DID continue to go through life with exactly the same haircut.
Exactly the same haircut
It was a problem.
But then. Then came The Googling.
“You know,” I thought to myself one day, “I bet it’s not THAT hard to cut your own hair. I bet I could do it if I really wanted to. I will Google it.”
So I did. But rather than Googling something that might have actually helped me, like “THE PERILS OF CUTTING YOUR OWN HAIR”, say, I obviously Googled something like, “Cutting your own hair is easy, yeah?” Because I got a bunch of results that were all about how EASY it was to cut your own hair. How easy? SO easy! “Awesome!” I said. “Pass me the kitchen scissors, Terry!”
OK, I didn’t say that last bit. Instead, I took my search to YouTube. And there I found a bunch of tutorials with titles like, “How to cut your hair yourself – it’s easy, and not in the least bit stupid!” They had all been made by lovely young girls with gorgeous, gorgeous hair. “I cut it myself,” they all said in their videos. “Because it’s easy!”
And that was when I reached for the scissors.
Well, no, not exactly. I actually spent several weeks contemplating the thought, which obviously makes me sound even more stupid, because there was SO MUCH TIME for me to talk myself out of it. (“Why didn’t you mention this plan?” asked Terry, aghast, when I came out of the bedroom looking like I’d just lost a fight with Edward Scissorhands. “Because you would have talked me out of it,” I said, and that right there shows you why I should probably be taken into protective custody for my own good.) Then, on Saturday, I was having dinner at my parents’ house when, following a routine trip to the bathroom, I looked in the mirror above the hand basin and realised that some strands of my hair were much longer than others.
(This was the cut I mentioned here, by the way, so either some strands of my hair grow freakishly faster than others, or I’d been walking about like that for the past four weeks. And the only reason I had THAT cut was because the last time I’d been to that salon, they’d left one side much longer than the other. Yes, I still went back. Because they’re cheap and I’m in and out in ten minutes, which makes me willing to overlook the fact that hairdressing obviously isn’t part of their skill set.)
(This isn’t even the bad bit of the story yet, by the way.)
“Aha!” I thought. “This is just the opportunity I’ve been waiting for! I will use my new found hair-stylin’ skills – thanks, YouTube! – to fix this!”
So, while my parents and Terry were all outside taking photos of the night sky (Don’t ask), I went into the kitchen, snuck the hairdressing scissors out of the drawer (Yes, my parents own hairdressing scissors. Because my parents own EVEYTHING. Seriously, there will probably come a day when I can type the sentence, “.. so I went into the kitchen and snuck my parents’ nuclear warhead out of the drawer…”) and retired with them to the bathroom.
SNIP! Went the scissors. SNIPSNIP! A-SNIPSNIPSNIP! It was, dare I say it, easy. And also oddly satisfying. As I snipped, I felt my powers grow. It was like when Luke Skywalker started learning all those mad Jedi skillz. Seriously, it was JUST LIKE THAT.
“The Force is strong in you, young Padawan,” I told my reflection. “Attempting all kinds of complicated hairdressing feats, soon you will be!”
And sure enough, the hair looked fine. But I had created a monster of a different kind, there in my parents bathroom. You see, up until then, my thoughts about hair cutting had been of the strictly theoretical kind. It was one of those things that are kind of fun to think about, but which you know you’ll never actually DO, like when I imagine myself on X-Factor sometimes. Now, though, things were different. Buoyed by my recent success in the bathroom, my plans started to take on a more concrete form. It was but a matter of time before I put my skills to their true test, and one way or another, I knew my hair would be a-changin’. I just didn’t realise it would be happening this Tuesday.
After all my planning, though, when it did happen, it was very much a spur-of-the-moment thing. It was yesterday morning. I’d just finished blow-drying my hair, and I wasn’t happy with it. The bits at the front were looking a little straggly, and wouldn’t sit right, and all of sudden I knew EXACTLY what to do about it.
“Screw this!” I said, then I turned on my heel, grabbed the scissors, and cut those bad boys right off, without even giving myself a chance to think about it.
Of course, as soon as I saw the worryingly-long strands of hair fall to the floor, I realised what you all realised right at the start of this post: that I had made a monumental mistake. The full weight of the delusion I’d been operating under all came crashing down upon me in that one-split second, and for the first time in weeks, I was able to see clearly: and not just because I’d chopped several inches of my hair off.
So I cut some more, in a bid to even it all up.
WHOOPS.
Only then did I accept defeat and do what I should have done in the first place: I called the salon. And not my local Krappy Kuts, either. I knew this task would be beyond them. No, I called the proper salon, ‘fessed up, and managed to get an appointment with the salon director that afternoon. One hour and a lot of money later, I was no longer looking like a total idiot (Luckily my ruthless attack on my own head had centred solely around those strands at the very front, so the rest of the hair remains intact. And actually, the stylist has managed to give me more or less the cut I was trying to do myself, and which I’d been thinking about getting for months. It’s just a shame I don’t actually like it now I have it, thus proving that I was RIGHT to be scared to make even the smallest change, and that I should never, ever, EVER try to change my hair, no matter how bored with it I get). I WAS still feeling like one, though, obviously.
And that’s how I came to have a sideways fringe, and no money.
The End
(P.S. No, I’m not posting photos. I’m going to be pinning it back until it grows out anyway, and I’ve also been getting some very personal comments about the general state of my face here recently: I can change my hair, but there’s not much I can do about my face, unfortunately, so no photos until it grows out!)
Tagged cutting your own hair, hair
This morning I went to the gym, just like I always often sometimes do of a morning. Now, when I go to the gym, I’m always weighed down with a collection of STUFF that is essential to my existence at said gym: stuff like my hoodie (yeah, yeah, I own a hoodie, settle down), water bottle, car keys, gym card, iPhone, etc. When I use the treadmill, most of this stuff fits onto the shelf below the display (Not the iPhone. I normally just throw it around the room. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I announced my arrival at a spin class by opening the door of the studio and basically just throwing the phone inside. No, I have no idea how I managed it: I think I must have tripped over my own feet in the doorway, and somehow managed to drop/throw the phone in my struggle to steady myself. What I do know is that this was the second time my phone had preceded me into a class at the gym, so it’s a miracle that thing is still working, seriously.). This time, however, I decided to use the elliptical. This was to prove a fatal mistake.
The elliptical doesn’t have a shelf for STUFF. A “Stuff Shelf”, if you will. Well, it does, but it’s only big enough for the phone and the water bottle, so I placed the rest of my STUFF in a neat little pile beside me on the floor and got on with my workout. (Aside: Bambi Girl was in the gym at the same time as me, obviously. She was doing this weird, suspended animation kind of running move, which involved the treadmill moving very fast, and her kind of skipping slowly above it, all Bambi like. It was pretty compelling stuff to watch, I’m telling you. She probably thinks I’m stalking her now, whereas as we all know, it’s the other way around. Anyway!) When I was done, I got off the machine, and gathered all my stuff off the floor, ready to leave.
It was only as I reached the main reception area of the gym that I realised I seemed to be carrying more stuff than I’d had when I arrived. Huh? How could this be? I glanced down at my arms, to reassure myself that I was just imagining things again, and there, cradled protectively against my bosom, along with my phone, membership card and water bottle, was this:
Exhibit A: bottle of detergent, with label reading “Please wipe down your machine, thank you.”
Oookkaaaay. Now, there are some people in my life who would describe me as a bit of a control freak. Put it this way: you know the episode of Friends where it’s revealed that Monica has a mini Hoover, which she uses to vacuum her main Hoover? I thought that was an excellent idea. BUT – and it’s rather a big “but” – I have to point out that I am not yet SO much of a neat freak that I carry my own bottle of detergent, complete with handy “please wipe down your machine” label with me every time I go to the gym. (Only some of the times. No, I’m kidding….) This, then, was clearly the GYM’S bottle of detergent. The fact that I had caught myself in the act of absconding with it meant that either:
a) It had been on the floor next to my stuff, and I had gathered it up along with said stuff.
b) The bottle of detergent is alive, hates living at the gym, and figured it would hitch a ride with me. “Let’s get outta this gym toniiiight, nothin’ but dust in the shaaadooowwws!” it would sing as we went.
c) I am a secret kleptomaniac (secret in that even I didn’t know about it, I mean), and have moments when I black out and steal things from gyms, and possibly other places. That would explain all of the shoes, actually. (“These? Oh gosh, no, I wasn’t STEALING these! They were just lying on the floor, and I must’ve, you know, dropped my coat on top of them, then when I picked it up they must’ve been inside, silly me, tee hee!*)
Whatever the explanation, I think I got off pretty lightly here. I mean, thank God I realised before I walked out with it! Can you even IMAGINE the embarrassment of being caught trying to “steal” a bottle of detergent from the gym? Or the humiliating phone call I’d have had to make to Terry. “Oh, hi, babe! Yeah, I’m at the police station. I bin stealin’ again. Yeah, detergent. Can you come and get me? And bring bail? They’re asking for £2.75…”
(I have no idea why I have a Southern accent in my little “caught stealing” fantasy. I just do.)
Anyway, needless to say, I returned the detergent to its rightful place, and escaped the gym without further incident. I expect the security cameras will have captured a nice little video clip for the staff Christmas party this year, though…
* Some of my readers have a tendency to take everything I write totally seriously. For those readers, I feel the need to point out that I have never stolen shoes, or, indeed, anything else. It’s just the bottles of detergent.
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