I was laughed at today, several times. I was laughed in a nice way though and I don’t mind that one bit.

After spending the morning trying to force out aldehydes from my bloodstream by pumping in pints of Ribena, I became almost recognisable as a human by 2pm.

This was one of those days where’d have been tempted to laze around and do nothing, but I had a date at the restaurant with my family. The company was fun; we were accompanied by my sister’s sort of in-laws and I managed to sit near them and away from my folks.

I adore my parents, but they irritate the fuck out of me, especially in restaurant situations. They’re both hard of hearing, as are their two friends who were also with us this afternoon. My fragile being could not cope with the usual confusion that stems from four partially deaf people (one Italian) talking over each other and having to repeat things ad infinitum because, unlike a lot of a lot of people who’s hearing isn’t what it was, they don’t seem to make any attempt to listen.

So I took a gamble and sandwiched myself between my niece and the in-laws. Little Con got scared by a langoustine, but once her mother had removed the flesh, the alien-like head thing provided much entertainment. Oh, we teach good table manners in our family.

At one point, I turned to my sister and asked if she might cut my hair for me. Mr in-law looked at me in horror, “You’ve just asked her to cut your hair??”

“Yes”, I replied

“But why don’t you just go to a hairdresser?”

“I don’t trust them”, I said. “They get on my nerves with all that faffing around they do, and then they don’t do it how I like it, so I might as well have twenty minutes of pain letting Anna do it. My hair still won’t be how I want it, but at least I won’t have to pay, and it always grows back anyway”.

I must learn where punctuation goes relative to speech marks.

I didn’t say that, but I’ll throw that in next time it goes quiet in the snug.

Anyway, I’ve been hacked at tonight. I think I look like something out of Les Mis. She uses the dissection scissors from the rat brain experiment when I was at university. Not quite sure how she got hold of them. I mean, stole them from me, rather than how she picked them up and used them.

My hair will grow, all too quickly, and maybe I’ll pluck up the courage to let a proper stylist loose on it at some point this year. They’ll throw in the snide remark, “So, who cut your hair last time?”. They all say this irrespective of whether you’ve had it cut by a professional or some maniac wielding a sharp object that was used to snip open a rat’s skull in a former life. I’ll probably entertain them and say it was the rival salon over the road… or “You!”.