New Hair! (and other things)

Mes chèr(e)s, lots of good things happened this week. First of all, I finally got my bank account approved and I am now a proud customer of Lloyds TSB, their slogan appropriately being "For the journey". I'll go with that any time, since Barclay's "One small step" turned out to be a bit of a euphemism and trust me, you don't want to get me started on HSBC, and anyway, I might get sued. Well, a few days ago my debit card was delivered and I went on a bit of a virtual spree on Amazon and I now call Zach Braff's brilliant dramedies "Garden State" and "Last Kiss" my own. Well, I paid for them but they haven't been delivered yet.

Also, since it is important enough to end up as the headline of this post (which of course has nothing to do with the fact that I couldn't think of any witty pun to use as a title instead), I went to get my hair cut today. I've been complaining about it for a while now, and even though the new colour is still lovely, the ends were in absolute shreds and I was desperately in need of something new. You can't really tell from the picture, but I had about two inches chopped off and I also got a sideways fringe. It is still taking some getting used to because it keeps falling in my face so I can't a) see and b) eat. Still, the things you do...

Another good thing that happened was that on our way to the hair salon, Lauren and I found a non-dodgy-looking charity shop on Askew Road and decided to pop in (my new-found love for charity shops is definitely worth another blog entry at some other time). It had quite a large selection of books, so while Lauren was browsing the hangers for dirt cheap but still wearable designer gear, I quickly located a copy of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes (yes, the very same book I'm writing my thesis about and which I unfortunately forgot in Germany) and, even better, a coffee table edition of Stephen Fry in America. While this alone would absolutely have made my day, when I was waiting for my turn at the hairdresser's I found out that it had been signed. I now own a book that Stephen effing Fry signed to some wretched creature named Tom "with admiration, love and thanks" who then proceeded to sell it at a blasted charity shop in East Acton! I'm at a loss to grasp how someone could be so wretchedly ignorant, but then I suppose it takes all sorts. Rest assured that, had it been me, this book would be sitting on a specially made altar and I would bore all my visitors to death about how I came to possess it. Come to think of it, this is probably what I'm doing now, so sorry about that.

Last Sunday, I had a visitor from Oxford (Andy) and since he can get hammered at a pub in Ox any time, we decided to embark on a proper London adventure and went to Mudchute Farm, which is situated on the Isle of Dogs and, according to their website, "the largest city farm in London". Once you enter the grounds, you feel like you're a million miles away from the pandemonium that is London, even though all you have to do is look up and you can see the skyline of the City. Anyway you'll find nothing very exotic there (except some llamas), but they had cute baby lambs (who were very shy and didn't want to be petted), two ducks called Carl and Ed, an overly tactile cow (it gave me a good shove with the head when I tried to pat its head) and fluffy baby bunnies and and and... it was a good Sunday, even though I tried to kill Andy (and Lauren and Steve) by clogging their arteries with home-made schnitzel and deep-fried chips afterwards. I'm currently trying to upload the pictures to the this blasted mess of a blog, but it's not working the way it's supposed to, so I have to use my Photobucket instead. So here's the Mudchute pictures:

The City skyline
Andy and a sheep
me and a sheep

I don't think that all the other little things that put a smile on my face this week are worth elaborating, so I will mercifully shut up at this point. Have a lovely Saturday night all of you (myself, I'm going for a drink with a lad from Wolverhampton I met at quiz night on Thursday), enjoy the stunning weather and don't do anything I wouldn't do! xx