It’s no secret that I consider my hair to be one of those things that just happens.  I don’t deal with hairdressers anymore; my sister does a perfectly good job of hacking away the excess growth in a manner similar to somebody trimming a hedge.  The curls just spring back into place and eventually it all grows back, well it sort of grows outwards, until it reaches a state that is best described as “ridiculous”.  At this point, I wait for an opportunity when she’s in not too bad a mood and I approach her, like a lion tamer with chair and whip, and gently broach the subject of her setting about me with the rat brain scissors.

Anyway.  ANYWAY! I last had my hair cut two months ago and I swear it’s not grown at all since.  All that’s happened in the interim period is the appearance of some very curly grey hairs and the rest of it seems to have got curlier.  Weird.  It looks kind of cool, but if I don’t balance my styling product, it turns into a mimsy bubble perm within two hours of it being dried.  In conjunction with my official middle-aged status, excess weight and terrible dress sense, I’m sure some who only encounter me by sight must perceive me as a meek secretarial type who lives alone with five cats and who flicks herself off to Great British Bake Off on tape… that’s until I let rip a demonic tirade of foul-mouthed abuse at them for not setting off the millisecond the traffic lights change from red to red/amber.

I do have terrible anger issues when I’m behind the wheel of a car.  But then again, so many motorists, pedestrians and cyclists are utter fucktards.  I’m a firm believer that the UK’s National Health Service, welfare system and compensation culture have had a negative impact on natural selection in our species.  Bad Tina! What I mean by that is that people who are perfectly capable seem to be less inclined to take responsibility for themselves: they know that somebody else will look after them or their kids; that somebody will patch them up or give them healthcare if they don’t look after themselves; that they’ll be able to sue somebody if they get knocked over while wandering down the middle of the road, gawping at their phones and listening to music with their backs to the traffic.

Anyway!

I don’t know

You know that thing when somebody asks you a question that you don’t know the answer to and you reply by saying “I don’t know”?  Why does this then turn into an inquisition?  Surely, if you don’t know, you don’t know. In certain circumstances, you can add “… but I can find out for you (if can be arsed)”, or “let me think about it”, but generally, if I don’t know, I’ll say so instead of coming out with a load of crap or speculating.

Bin the bin

One thing that I do know is that I was right when I predicted that the University’s “bin the bin” policy would result in a health hazard.  As part of its commitment to be an ecologcally-minded and responsible organisation, all office bins were removed about three years ago and, instead, bins and recycling points were located central areas.  The cleaners would no longer be coming into offices to remove waste and rubbish and recycling would only be removed from the designated sites.  This coincided with the annual “catch it, bin it, kill it” campaign that aims to prevent the spread of colds and other nasties by promoting general good hygiene.  So people were forced to “catch it” in a tissue, then accumulate snotty tissues on their desks or in carrier bags placed beneath their desks until such a time as convenient to transport the refuse to the bin in the kitchen.  Of course, office workers aren’t inclined to get up from their desks and wander to the kitchen bin every time they finish a yoghurt or piece of fruit and these tend to be at the desk-side until a natural break point occurs, or until the end of the day.

We had a rather nasty and irritating fly infestation in our office suite the other week after the rubbish bin in the kitchen hadn’t been collected for a few days.  After a bit of a whinge and eventual removal of the offending litter, the flies still persisted, becoming more concentrated in our particular office.  Fly spray was having no effect and work was interrupted by regular outbursts of “fucking flies!” as another colleague came under attack from the buzzing menaces.  And then, there was a collective realisation: one of our colleagues has been off sick for a few weeks.  “Is there any fruit in his drawers or anything? Have a look around his desk”.  And there, under his desk was a carrier bag that was the epicentre of the fly infestation.  Phil the Brave picked up the offending item and carried it out of the office at arms’ length, followed Pig Pen-like by the cloud of flies.

For fuck’s sake.  Nobody can blame the organisation’s anti-bin policy on this incident, not directly; food waste shouldn’t be kept in the office for more than an hour or two and certainly not overnight.  However, if we did have office bins that people chucked the odd apple core or yoghurt pot into, and these were emptied each morning, then, you know, a festering massive of gore wouldn’t have been allowed to grow under a sick colleague’s desk.

Of course, I’d been hoping for a more gruesome discovery in the floor space – body parts, that sort of thing, so I was sorely disappointed when the cause of the plague wasn’t related to the fact that our building is sited on an ancient burial ground .  Not that it is or anything.  Still, the episode has given me lots to think about should I ever leave my job under a cloud.