I've moved

I have moved my blog to a slightly new address.  I can now be found on bighairmetamorphosis.wordpress.com.

Hair removal

In case anyone is thinking about having their tache and brows threaded (an ancient form of hair removal), be sure that you have nothing planned after the event. The Ronald McDonald look isn't too attractive!

A top city!

So we are into our fourth week in the new pad in Sheffield!  The move has tested our relationship, our stamina, our strength and our packing abilities to their limits.  I tend to agree when they say the stress of moving is number two on the list of Top Ten Most Stressful Experiences, the first being bereavement!

After the fourth day of trundling along the motorway in the cabin of our white van, littered with empty coffee cups, half eaten sandwiches and yorkie wrappers, emotions were running high.  Our muscles complained from countless trips up and down three flights of stairs to our flat, balancing box upon box of 13 years of accumulated clutter.

As the last bag was dragged through the door, we congratulated ourselves on a job well done - it is quite a feat trying to cram the contents of a three bedroom, three story house into a one and a half bedroom flat.  Consolidating one's personal possessions into 'can' or 'can't-live-without' piles, is time consuming and tedious especially when one is predisposed to putting everything in the 'can't live without' pile.

I knew things weren't going to be plain sailing when two weeks before the move we tackled our first and smallest cupboard, the 'Sports Cupboard'.  This tiny space under the stairs had somehow metamorphosed into a tardis of equipment, half of which I'd never seen or worn before.  Buried far far beneath the leggings, the hoodies, the skorts and shorts, the rugby tops, the tennis tees, the fencing gear, the softball pants, the padded cycling trousers, the bag of mismatched socks, the ice skating shirts and boots, the trainers and badminton rackets, was a bag of L's school exercise books and a mountain of teddy bears (origins unkown).  It was like an archaeological dig.  Much haggling ensued as we set about our mission:

'You can't keep that, it's dated!'
'But it's my cheese cloth shirt from 25 years ago' she says, stating the obvious.
'It wouldn't even make a good dishcloth! And unless you're planning on founding a commune in the woods, it's got to go...give me one good reason why we should keep it?'
She fumbles for a reason...
'You'd forgotten you even owned the rag until we just unearthed it...' I say, remembering the time I purposely buried it in the cupboard, not wanting to throw it away for fear of reprimand but determined to prevent L from ever wearing it again.  Out of sight, out of mind.
'But it's one of my faaavourites!' she whines.
'So here's the ultimatum, you can keep that rag if you get rid of the green, oh-so-butchy army pants with the 20,000 pockets!'  Yet another item of clothing I purposely banished to bottom of the cupboard.

And so it went on...for two whole hours (that was just the Sports Cupboard!).  I hasten to add that both the cheese cloth shirt and the oh-so-butchy army pants made it into the 'can live without' pile.  PHEW!

After systematically tackling each cupboard of the house, bartering, arguing and sulking along the way, until we felt thoroughly cleansed.   L is now convinced that we could lead a minimalist life but I'm dubious.  When you have a collection of over 100 piggy banks and have trouble parting with your favourite socks which are so holey they're practically leg warmers, there's no hope!

So Sheffield, the city of steel! The first stainless steel was invented here in 1913 by a man called Harry Brearley.   We've been here less than a month and already I love it!  The first thing you notice is that Sheffield is very, very hilly.   It has done wonders for my thighs and my cardio vascular fitness.  

One of Sheffield's best attributes is its location. The city is within spitting distance of the peak district - Hathersage, Longshaw Estate, Frogget Edge, Bakewell and many more scenic villages are all within 30 minutes of our front door.   We are enthusiastically exploring the moorland walks after work and have now created a new cupboard, 'The walking cupboard', where our previously underused walking equipment has pride of place.  Four weeks in, and we still feel as though we are on an extended holiday.  

Most mornings before work, I busy myself exploring the local area, testing coffee shops and breathing in the fresh, peak district air.   I'm nurturing ruddy cheeks and have been quite surprised that Yorkshire men do indeed live up to the stereotype.  I have seen more whippets in the last four weeks than I ever saw during my 12 years in Nottingham!  If you aren't sure what a whippet looks like - it is a small, unnaturally skinny version of a greyhound.   They can often be seen wearing a coat to protect their skeletal form from the elements and their sad eyes seem only to communicate one thing, 'Feed Me!' (excuse the drawing, I'm testing my new graphics pad).

Whenever one moves to a new city, they inevitably have to start from scratch on the friendship front.   Ideally, one should throw themselves into a new team sport, group pass time or creative activity that paves the way for extended conversation, drinks and ultimately friendship!  Although pigeon racing - a true Yorkshire activity - might be a good place to start, I'm not sure the participants would necessarily be my future best friends (I'm not talking about the pigeons).  So, with no life drawing classes or softball teams to note, what else is there except....AFRICAN DRUMMING!  Oh YEAH!

On a whim L and I signed up to a taster session and found ourselves amongst an odd group of people.  L's cheese cloth shirt may not have been a faux pas with this motley crew.  There was one particularly scary 6ft lady of considerable girth who, in a trance like state, beat the Dundun drums for the full 1.5 hour session, neither missing a beat nor cracking a smile.   Her menancing stare was unfortunate, as was her lack of neckline and 5 o'clock shadow.  But, don't judge a book by its cover I say.  

Run by a man with extraordinary caffeine-induced energy, who has a tendancy to jump up and down whilst yipping to the beat, it turns out that African Drumming is decidedly good fun.   It appeals to ones inner tribal warrior.   The leader's enthusiasm is infectious, even the quietest and shyest people in the group were soon beating their Djembe drum and jigging along chanting the phrase 'I like cheese' in time with the beat - don't ask!

As yet we haven't identified any new friend material but we have the whole 10 week course to get to know people.  A slight flaw in our plan might be that drumming is not conducive to conversation.

There's still much to explore and many walks to discover and I'm looking forward to the rest of the year.   For now, Sheffield is living up to its reputation as a diverse city with a rich heritage and soul. 

Silent rooms

Yesterday our big fat ginger cat left for a new home and a new life. The decision to give him away seemed sensible given that we will be starting a new chapter in our own lives too.   A move to a new city, a new job and a new flat (which doesn't allow pets) meant we had to make a difficult choice.

Since adopting the cat three years ago, he has been the source of many different emotions: annoyance at his 20 minute conversations that consist of 'meow, meow, meow' even after he's been fed and groomed to within an inch of his life; murderous when he tangles himself around your feet if you are in a hurry or carrying pans of hot food across the kitchen; disgust at his tendency to drool whilst purring and padding in contentment on your tummy or worse, when he sneezes the excess drool over your face if something tickles his nasal passages; amusement at his 'mad' half hour when he runs around the house batting anything that moves; delight when he loudly attempts to sneak up on a fat pigeon then visibly sighs when he inevitably fails; but most of all, he made us love him and now he's gone, the house feels empty and the rooms are all quiet.

There's no one to great you as you step through the front door or feline calls of 'is anyone there, I need company?' if we are upstairs busying ourselves in the office. I miss the half hour before bed time when he chooses to sit on my lap and keep me company with a purr like an outboard motor.  My big, fat ginger friend has gone and I miss him.  So here is a tribute to fatty - I hope they look after you in your new home and appreciate your loveable personality and odd little quirks!

Ageing...

Well isn't getting old a funny thing!  Yesterday I saw a couple of boys hanging over the fence that surrounds the primary school near my house.  The boys were deep in conversation, gazing wistfully across the playground as children shrieked and laughed during their lunch break.  As I passed by, I could hear them talking

"...yeah I heard it's gone down hill since then..."
"do you remember when we used to...",  "I can't believe it's been seven years"
 A pause whilst they silently reminisced.
"Seven years?!!! has it really been that long?!  SEVEN YEARS?!"

It made me smile.  18 years old and wondering where the time had gone. 

As my close circle of friends are now predominately in their 40's, the question of 'where has the time gone?' crops up more and more.  I have a few years to go but the little changes are starting creep in. It is fatal inspecting yourself in the mirror - when did all these wrinkles start to appear?  Why is my chin as downy as a mouse's bottom?  And good God, what's with all the salt and pepper in my hairline?  I'm only 35!

In my head I'm still an 18 year old. Nothing much has changed except I find myself feeling a little more irritated by the headphone-wearing teenagers who play their music so loud everyone on the bus can still hear it.  I have to bite my tongue to avoid tutting at the students who ruin my quiet drink in the pub with raucous, drunken laughter and too much frivolity!   The idea of a suburban disco for the person that can't be bothered to go into town, drink until they're seeing double, queue to get into an expensive club that doesn't open until 12am, then stagger home at 5am to sleep off a hangover, is actually quite appealing.  

I heard someone on the radio a few weeks ago, she was in her 70's and said "age is like a train and you're standing on the platform watching it whizz by".    I quite agree.  I shall not try to defeat it but I may try to hide it with a cupboard full of anti-ageing balms, night repairing cream, bag busting gels and pots of hair dye...or maybe I'll just put my feet up, drink a cup of tea and listen to radio 4!

Commercialised Declaration of Love Day

So you're either an abstainer or a partaker, but do we really need to be told when, where and how to declare our love for someone?  On February the 14th, we all rush around like crazed animals trying to searching for that overpriced token gesture that tells our other halves we care when actually, we could do this at any other time of the year for free (or considerably cheaper).  And whilst all the couples are panick buying bunches of roses, chocolates and V-day card, those without someone to share Valentine's day have it rubbed in their face every which way.  You can't escape, it's everywhere - even on the GOOGLE logo <sigh>!

Relationships in a mobile age

As I sat in bed the other night with my ipad in one hand and my phone in the other, having just dropped the ipad on my head and reprimanded L for laughing uncontrollably, it suddenly occurred to me that we'd hardly spoken a word to each other all day.

We often have extended conversations via Twitter, Facebook or text, yet put us in a coffee shop together with the intention of having a face to face conversation, and we both instinctively reach for our phones to tweet to the world that we are sitting in a coffee shop and the day is rainy or sunny or windy or snowy and the barista has just made a pretty picture in the coffee froth!


I'm ever so slightly concerned that the panic I feel when I've left my phone at home is an indicator of an addiction.  After a short while, I get twitchy and start tapping on any shiny surface that resembles a touch screen.  No doubt if I was left without my phone for long enough, I'd resort to conversations that were limited to a maximum of 100 characters or end up speaking in the third person:  "Bighair hasn't seen you for a while and wants to know if you've had a good week?"  "Bighair is suggesting that you and she go to the pub for a swift pint sometime soon", "Bighair is going offline"!

How did we ever get by without mobile technology and will my ability to hold a real conversation simply fade away? Will human kind evolve to talk only with their thumbs?  Who knows - I must now go and tweet this cartoon.