Monday, June 7
A Day Of, Erm, Yeah
Mondays ay? The start of the week. The day to crack on and get things done after a weekend ofI got out of bed at midday today. Not intentionally, you understand. I would much rather have laid there for another hour or so, but the incessant drilling next door finally convinced me to drag my ass out of bed and into the shower. It's not as if I was asleep until midday either. That fucking drilling started (to my knowledge) sometime around 9.30, and was going constantly until I caved in and got out of bed. The fuckers. Don't they know that these houses are full of students?!
Pete was the only other of my housemates who was around, and the house was still a tip after Saturday, so we set about cleaning the living room. By this I mean we gave it a proper clean. I'm talking moving sofas around to mop under them, cleaning everything that wasn't nailed down, and leaving the space practically sparkling.
It'll be dirty again by tomorrow, just you wait.
The kitchen was another story. Neither of us fancied doing all of that washing-up, and nor did we like the look of the sticky, slightly higher than usual, floor. Making breakfast / lunch was a case of minimising contact with any surface as much as is humanly possible. Where's that Buddhist levitating skill when you need it most?
It's been the hottest day of the year so far today, somewhere up around 27c, and I noticed myself getting a lot hotter a lot quicker than usual. This is another thing that has been happening more often recently, and I have come to the conclusion that it is my hair that is causing it.
My body is simply not used to having such a huge mass of insulating material on the top, back and sides of my head, and it is causing me to overheat rapidly. A haircut was called for. It was time to say goodbye to the experiment that was me growing my hair, and to return to my neatly trimmed and manageable hairstyle.
I wandered down into West Hampstead, intending to go to a barber's that I know of at the bottom end of West End Lane. After a 5 minute walk in the glaring sun, the barber's was, of course, closed. Slightly downcast, and a lot warmer than when I had set out, I turned round to walk back up the hill.
Now, there are loads of nice hairdresser's between my house and this barber's, but I refuse to pay anything more than £7.50 for a haircut. These places want about £25 from you to give it a once-over with some scissors. It was whilst walking past one of these plush salons on the way home that I noticed a sign: Models Required - Gents Only.
I'm a Gent, I can do this. Thirty seconds of conversation with the receptionist, and I have a free haircut booked for tomorrow lunchtime, at a lavish little salon. And i can add the word "model" to my somewhat limited CV. Who knows, you could see my face in hairdresser's windows in years to come.
Which reminds me: amongst the row of shops that I live above, there is a hairdresser's. In the window, there are some clearly old photos of men's haircuts, one of which I am absolutely certain is Matthew Perry. Yes, Chandler was a hair model in his early twenties. I will have to take my camera out and snap a photo of the, erm, photo before posting it here for you all to decide whether it is in fact him or not.
I was bored by the time I got back home and had nothing to do (if you discount hunting for a job [the gits still haven't phoned me back] and sorting out my move to Germany), so it was time for a DVD. I bought About Schmidt recently, but hadn't got round to watching it, so About Schmidt it was.
I have to admit that I wasn't really giving it my full attention, what with reading the newspaper and the arrival of a few housemates, but from what I saw of it, it was pretty damn funny. Funny in a dark, slow-burning kind of way, but funny nonetheless.
The next big highlight of my day was checking my emails, to find one from my Dad, informing me that he'd just bought a laptop for me out in Hong Kong. We discussed it a few months ago, and decided that it made sense for me to take a laptop over to Germany, rather than my current (bulky) desktop. He gave me the specs and model number, so I hunted some reviews of it down, one of which you can read here.
I have to say that it looks very plush, and all of the reviews give it a good write-up. The big plus of it is its apparently excellent sound system, which will hopefully save me buying a sub + satellites system when out in Germany. Now, if only I could convince him that I need an iPod...
What else has happened since then? Nothing too major: I cooked my best-ever spaghetti bolognese for Alex and myself, which went down very well. I am an accomplished cook when I can be arsed to spend some time over it, which at least bodes well for any future marital relationship.
That's one of the things I've learnt from my Dad: if you, as a guy, can cook and are willing to cook, it makes for much better relations in the home, as the woman isn't under a burden to cook each and every night, no matter what else she might have done / have planned that day...
He says, not even being able to find a girlfriend at the moment. Who am I to talk about the rights and wrongs in marriage? Meh.
And that about sums up today. Not a bad day, but also a wholly unproductive one. I need to get that job...
