Hair is Everything
I skipped off to London to get a haircut. Unsurprisingly my hairdresser didn’t recognise me. The last time I cut my hair was 8 months ago - I’m the sort of woman who is especially bad for business, I completely missed the part of femininity that compels one to brush, let alone style one’s hair. It does what it wants, how it wants and I just let it. Now it is all bouncy and compliant - chin length and curly with wrinkle-softening layers around the eyes. I too feel bouncy as though unearthed beneath the layers. What if the girlish curl does poke me in the eye repeatedly, what is blindness when faced with beauty? I have returned to look after the same octogenarian couple in the British countryside. Most days her Alzheimer’s won’t let her remember me and she’ll get annoyed and swear at me in Swedish. He’ll tell me stories from years gone by in an excruciating amount of detail. Well that's how it was, but in my 4 month absence in South Africa Mrs Alzheimer’s has gotten worse. Her bad ...
