Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Shortest Ever Hair

I'VE BEEN (INTERMITTENTLY) AT MY HAIR with a pair of nail scissors all weekend; and the result ~ my shortest hair for 20 years! All the long bits, the crap bits, the straggles are gone!The remaining crop's uniform just-over-1" long and deliberately styleless. No dreadful parting anywhere to be seen. It stands up readily ~ electroshock mad professor-style with a hint of fledgling birdie chick chic.

Because it was cut with nail scissors, you can still see where it was chopped off in clumps. A look I was hoping to achieve.

THE RAZOR-BLADED EXPECTORATIONS of last week's non-piggery-influenced Common Cold are cruising smoothly to oblivion. My last cold post ~ you know the one exclaiming something like "Better Already!" ~ was, I now confess, a little over-enthusiastic. The fiery worst was over, but my airpipes were and still are cobwebbed in choking, membranous rattling phlegm. I have coughing fits an ancient pensioner would be proud of.

But it's not a rattling old peabag cough ~ and that's the point. Nothing coughs up. I just feel like five thousand grains of half-buried itching-rice are semi-dislodged by my hackings. Yet still: nothing ever comes up.

Here's Britain's "socialist" National Health Service (o yeah what a commie idea ~ not to demand a dying man's credit card before he's out of the ambulance! ) ... Pandemic Flu Service site. Do have a non-public hysteria whipping peek.

I read that last sentence back and read it wrong. But I won't tell you what I read. You can read that into it yourself...

ANYWAY I FEEL we're in the 21st Century now. man: I really feel it. WH Smith, Britain's biggest stationers, no longer sell bottled writing ink!

So now-a-days you get 6 or 8 Parker cartridges ~ containing about a bottletop full of ink ~ for £2.60 (I ask you!) ~ which is far more than a 2 fluid oz" (is that 56 mls?) bottle of Quink ever cost me.

Not to be deterred, I'm Harrods-bound ~ Harrods being my favourite shop in the world: the food halls in particular are amazing. And their downstairs stationer's dept. sells every brand and colour of writing ink imaginable. Last time I got Montblanc (click and see), which comes in a shoe-shaped container; the "heel" being reserved for a pen-shaped filling-reservoir while the toes house the swilling year's supply of ink...



Montblanc's Mickey Mouse-style Meisterstück is theee fountain-pen of choice for treaty-signing world leaders. Tradition being that upon signing, statesmen swap "Stücks" as a nod to international harmony. (Then swap straight back as soon as the eyes of the world's media are off them ~ Meisterstücke cost $800-$1000 or more depending on whether you go for gold-nibbed or platinum...

HAVING SAID ALL THIS I'm in an emotional fight for survival (again!). My mood is down on the floor. (Perhaps Harrods might sell something to lift it. But I doubt it. Their heroin dept. closed down in the 1920s ...

PS Gledwood Volume 2 got 355 hits yesterday!

I can barely believe it. Perhaps my hit-counter is wrong ...

Just who from..? I'd love to know ...

11 comments:

  1. Honey Harrods say they can procure ANYTHING . . maybe you could ask them to get you clean! Shame about bottled ink but frankly I think you can only buy it here in art supplies shops. Amazingly, the best one in Sydney is right in the middle of Darlinghurst our gay and junkie centre. I loved Harrods . .not so the lady in the Crystal department who had a caniption watching clare and I walk through the Waterford with backpacks on . .I think she was worried we'd swing round and lacerate her Lladro!

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  2. Gemme clean? I wish... Yeah up till 4 or 5 years ago bottled ink was still readily available... now it feels like a real antiquity, like asking for powdered ink as, (so I'm told) the "ink monitor" used to make up each morning and dutifully fill each well in each desk in olde grammare and secondarye moderne schueles ...

    yeah we have a brilliant shop in Covent Gdn called The London Graphic Centre which sells a brand called Higgins Eternal ~ a carbonic black fountain pen ink for vain people like me who want their writings to "last forever" (well at least it won't fade)... + drunks like me who're constantly spilling "water", "cups of tea" etc all over their intellectual manuscripts... haha!!

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  3. I like the sound of your haircut.

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  4. How daring - to cut your own hair!

    And for ink - if Harrod's fails, try an artist's supply. You can get India Ink if nothing else there.

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  5. Cutting hair with nail scissors .. now that's brave! I once took a good chunk out of my hair with hair buzzers back in the 90's. It surprisingly turned into a new hairstyle and I kept it for years.

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  6. Gleddy,
    Sorry you are low. I, too, struggle with clinical depression. My sympathies.

    Sending love,

    SB

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  7. I always used to write with a fountain pen - I just love the smell of ink! Unfortunately email has taken over.

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  8. I'm a total philistine...I couldn't wait to use ballpoint in school and now email has come in, I use a pen only under great duress!

    Well done on the hair...as long as you're happy with it, that's all that matters. I used to have mine long, but was too chicken to chop it all off in one fell swoop, so it got shorter by degrees over a period of months. Now it stays short...suits the grey...

    Hope the blues don't last too long...nasty things they are.

    As for all the hits, they're from the anonymous cruisers and lurkers who loiter outside our blogs but refuse to come in...

    Keep well, Gleds.

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  9. Nicole: it's FAR better than anything I've had for YEARS...

    Jeannie: before I forget yes I definitely wanna still see your blog pls don't 4get to contact me

    Drifter: see! Bravery pays off. And hair DOES grow back (as I constantly reminded myself..!!)

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  10. SB: I really wish sometimes I could just pop antidepressants like normal people but they disagree with me and turn my mood from a pit into a rollercoaster leading to a deeper pit~
    Not good!

    Akelamalu: yeah the aroma of Quink was unmistakeable, wasn't it...

    PussInBoots: at my first 2nd-ary school we weren't allowed anything else bar fountain pen... which of course made ballpoint feel like exotic forbidden fruit by the time I arrived at the second...

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  11. Gleds, you know how much I like fountain pens. I haven't found any problem with getting good ink. I order my pens on line. There is a Montblanc store here but there are a bit out of my league. I check E bay though.
    Hope that your mood passes soon. Hang in there.

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