Incommunicado

My computer started to run very slowly last weekend. I mentioned it to my husband who said that sometimes they do that and didn't show much interest. During the week it was just plain awkward and by Thursday it wouldn't connect to the Internet. No Internet connection means no blog, amongst other things. When my husband came home on Thursday evening he had no choice but to look at the computer for me. The computers are his department in the same way that the kitchen is my department. He didn't have time to do much on Thursday but on Friday commented that in two hours 500 attempts had been made to hack into my computer. Now I wouldn't mind if 500 people read my blog but I don't think that they do. What these hackers expected to find I don't know. Anyway my clever husband managed to fix it. He would not have been allowed to spend two days, in the study, swearing at a computer for any other reason. So last night he was in my good books but then he went and spoilt things by keeping me awake, snoring, early this morning.

Crowning glory

Today I did something that I don't really enjoy - I went to the hairdresser. Usually when I go to the hairdresser the weather is either wet, with optional wind to restyle your hair as soon as you step outside the hairdressers, or hot and sunny and the last place that you want to be is under a hair drier. True to form the weather today was wet, but there was no wind. This is the fifth hairdresser that I have been to since we moved here, nearly five years ago. In Surrey I had been going to the same hairdresser for 15 years. I think that says a lot about the state of hairdressing in Chester.

I didn't exactly see eye to eye with the first hairdresser that I tried. I nearly had a stand up fight with her when she said that she couldn't cut my hair the way I wanted it cut. She had a lop-sided hair cut and could only really see out of one eye which probably explains the lop-sided hair cuts she gave me. The price was extortionate but I decide not to show myself up by querying it. The second hairdresser was more reasonably priced but his hair cutting was no better than the first one. The hair cut was short and shapeless and I was tempted to cover it with a brown paper bag but I decided that as I knew virtually nobody it wouldn't matter. I ventured into Chester and was horrified to notice that people were staring at my hair. It really was as bad or worse than I thought. I went home and cried. It is not really any consolation that within a few weeks he was shut. Life seemed to be one long bad hair day. When I am happy with my hair I am happy with life. For two pins I would have packed my bags and gone back to Surrey. At this point I decided that I was going to grow my hair, and by hook or crook, I was some how going to go back to my hairdresser in Surrey for her to cut my hair back into shape.

The third hairdresser cuts a friends a hair and she has been going to him for a long time. He actually cut my hair alright. He cut it three times and I had three different hair cuts which I found annoying as I like it cut the same every time. He didn't quite understand what I was asking him to do as he is a bit deaf. My friend didn't tell me this until after he had cut it for the first time. I find it difficult enough to explain to a hairdresser with good hearing what I want done so I stand no chance with one who is a bit deaf. Maybe the problem is that all hairdressers are a bit deaf. I left him and tried a young girl who had set herself up in the next village. At first she was very good but when I pointed out that my hair had lost its shape she more or less said that getting it right was the luck of the draw. I persisted with her in the hope that she would get it right again but she never did. As time went on she became more unreliable and I moved on to hairdresser number five.

It seems to have been fifth time lucky. This hairdresser has not made a mess of it, although sometimes it has been cut too short and other times not enough has been cut off making it a bit difficult to plan regular hair cuts, which I really need to be able to do, to fit into my busy schedule of the house, garden, work and anything else that comes my way. I have been going to her now for about 20 months so I think that she has the job.

An uplifting experience

We had the hall, stairs and landing carpeted about a month ago and as I predicted at the time would be necessary it came up today - or as they say in the trade uplifted, so that it could be refitted. There seems to be some sort of jinx on carpets in this cottage. Fortunately we do not have much furniture in the hall and most of what does live there, we had not put back. So getting ready for the carpet fitters did not involve too much work, on our part. Unlike last year, when by the time we got the living room straight, my husband and I could have got a job as removal men, because we had had to move the furniture in and out of the living room so many times. The carpet and the underlay had to be taken up on the landing so that the uneven floor boards could be boarded over. Considering what was being done, there was an awful lot of bumping and banging.I was doing some odd jobs in the room below and thought, at one point, that they were going to come through the ceiling, when a particularly loud bang had me jump out of my skin. Apparently the floor boards on our landing are a mixture of imperial and metric boards, which have different thicknesses. Imperial from when the cottage was built over a hundred years ago and metric from two and a half years ago when we had the builder - that is my assumption and I suppose that the EU is to blame for changing floor board sizes. Now the landing has been transformed, from a ploughed field into a bowling green if you imagine that it is green rather than beige or stone to give the carpet its' correct shade. The hall carpet also had a bit of a refit as it needed re-stretching. So now I am hoping that, that is that and it is on to the next job.

Location, location and location

This is the time of year when life comes to a standstill and I am at risk of getting square eyes. It is Wimbledon Fortnight. Somehow it just isn't the same now that Tim Henman has gone into long trousers and graduated from the tennis court to the commentary box. The tennis is not as riveting as it used to be and I really miss the silky smooth commentary of Jimmy Connors, but it still seems to be compulsive viewing.

I have to admit that I have a soft spot for Wimbledon. I bought my first flat there, as soon as my salary was enough to support a mortgage and have many happy memories of my bachelor girl days in SW19. The flat was in the wrong part of Wimbledon - I could not afford the village or up the hill. It was about as far away from the All England Lawn Tennis Club as you can get and still be in the SW19 postcode. But the address and post code were Wimbledon SW19 and I was on the first rung of the property ladder. The flat had only one bedroom. The windows rattled in the wind and the bathroom had a damp patch, but it was mine. When I moved in I had a cooker, a bed, a stool and a portable television. Within a few years I had out grown the flat and moved. From the flat I used to go, to queue, to get in, to stand, to watch the tennis on Centre Court or the No 1 Court. The contrast between watching the tennis on my old black and white portable television and seeing it live in 3-D colour was amazing. Today television is so good that seeing someone in the flesh can be quite a let down.

Wimbledon itself became a different place during Wimbledon Fortnight. The area around the railway station was tidied up and smartened up with hanging baskets while a variety of stalls, appeared within the confines of the station, selling souvenirs. The roads were clogged up with cars and crowds thronged out of the station. It was almost like being on holiday.

Now, when the television camera pans across the London skyline then zooms in to the Southfields area, I am transported back to a green and purple period in my life.