Fringe benefits? Not likely. A story of survival at the hairdressers.

I have a fringe now, something which I haven’t possessed since I was six years old and thought capturing garden snails was a valuable past time.

It all came about in an entirely innocent way, going to the hairdressers one afternoon after work, trying to pull together and tick off the myriad of tasks left to do before leaving Sevilla to move to Madrid.  And so I went, off to the first-in-best-dressed type of salon where you walk in and they attend to you according to arrival time.  After waiting for 45 minutes or so (sitting beside a mother and watching the haidresser cut her two young boys’ hair in a manner so meticulous as to suggest she was surgically removing a tumor from each) I began to notice that the gnawing in my stomach I’d been trying to ignore was becoming a full-blown hunger fest.  And that I was developing a please-feed-me headache to match.

“Shit,” I thought, “This can’t be good.”

When one has low blood-sugar, it’s relatively normal to become vague, faint, even bitchy.  I  habitually become all three, except that I also loose the ability to think rationally, or to respond to potentially dangerous situations in an altogether reasonable manner.

Situations such as, looking up to see a hairdresser wielding scissors and asking “Te hago flequillito?”  before you chirp “Sí!” without a second’s thought, not remembering that when too short, a fringe cut out of your hair has a tendency to become poofier than Sandra Dee’s when she turned up all leather-clad at the end of Grease.  And that for this reason you usually do all you can to avoid hairdressers getting all scissor-happy and cutting you a one.

“Como el tuyo,” I wanted to add, “Pero más largo.”  She had, you see, a lovely, sweeping number which fell delicately almost completely across her left eye, leaving a bit of body and bouce (but not too much, mind) on the right side.  It was silky and straight (blowdried, I suspect, within an inch of its life) and gently framed her face as one would hope one’s fringe would.

I, in my near diabetic sugar-low state of unawareness, noticed all the characteristics of her non-fluffy fringe in the second it took me not to respond to her question as I’d planned I might.  I was left, henceforth, to gaze at her in an imbecilic manner, watching as she parted my hair on the wrong side, before whipper-snippering it into the Brazilian wax equivilent of fringes.  The kind that don’t sweep at all – gently or otherwise – but rather bunch together in a fringe/clump not unreminiscent of the much loved ’80’s curl/poof/fringe.  The kind that either look like that, or, when swept to the side look as Jaggered as Mick himself, having seemingly been hacked into from the bottom up.

“Te gusta?”  She asks me.

Low-blood-suger-and-now-quite-painful-headache-Erin doesn’t answer.

“Un poco más, no?” Edwina Scissorhands adds, mistaking my silence for a request for more, and apparently not yet happy with her gardening.

The suggestion plunges me further into a state of shock/silence/hunger.

And so, I left, ten minutes and ten centimetres fringe-less later, to wander the streets of  Sevilla’s quaint and idyllicly Andalúz Santa Cruz looking more like I belonged in hippy La Alameda land, playing a flute and swinging a gangly, cross-bred’s lead while watching it pee against a lampost.

Spontaneous Upheaval

(Written six months after moving to Spain). When you move to another country, you move through a couple of stages of – let’s say appreciation – for your new home. The first stage is the ethrallment of…

love at first sight

…when everything seems fresher and more beautiful than it was at home.  Balconies, streets and people drinking coffee are scenes so picturesque that they seem to have been invented only yesterday.  The oddly strange new names for things and little quirky customs like having to weigh your own fruit at the supermarket are new and intesting.  Accents on vowels, squiggles above letters and people rolling their ‘r’s are the cutest things since you yourself were born.

After enthrallment comes…

awareness

…around about two months in, you’ll experience one or two reality checks.  Due to the physical and emotional upheaval of finding yourself somewhere to live and a person willing to pay you to work, you’ll probably find that you’ve contracted some sort of heinous flu, or at least, an odd tendency to break out in allergic reactions when faced with food that you used to eat abundantly – meaning that a visit to the doctor will be essential.  No longer cute, the doctor’s constant ‘r’ rolling and your own recent arrival in the country simply mean that you can’t easily communicate, and you end up leaving with a prescription for something that may or may not help you and a pissed off expression usually reserved for wild boar, or new mothers.   Set back number three comes in the form of…

financial shock

…your new home is a fair whack more expensive that your previous, which is something you were incapable of appreciating while your faculties were more involved in appreciating balconies, narrow cobblestoned streets, the proximity of sea and mountains and the ridiculous hairstyles paraded in these parts.  But your current reality of rice and onions with the occastional tin of tuna mixed in are no longer quite so delicious.  Of course, nothing would fix this as quickly as half an avocado and a squeeze of lemon spread on real grainy bread – but avocados sell for what you’d expect to get for you kidney, and the locals are yet to wake up to the fact that grainy bread is not a luxury that can be happily replaced by white bread bubbles. After a couple of reality checks and the unsightly period of awareness comes…

confusion

…bound to happen somewhere within your first six months, confusion is a moment when you realise that you brought yourself with youto this new place.  Life came with you too, and didn’t read the invitation you sent it that read ‘only awesomeness please’.  You have an irrational cry or two at home spurred by something idiotic like there being no milk, or being tired, or not understanding the shop assistant when she asked you if you had a Mercadona frequent customers’ card.  You try to blame it on your period and then realise that it’s not the right time of the month for that, setting you off down another teary track where you scream silently at yourself for being in such a beautiful place, doing what you always wanted to do and feeling like all you want to do is eat a bar of chocolate and go to sleep for the next two months.  Confusion is the period when ‘living the dream’ turns into simply ‘living’ and you realise that wherever you are, people still have the same problems…they’re just in another language, making it all the harder to rant about them. Confusion lasts about as long as it takes to make an awesome friend or two, and is followed not by a lightning bolt of clarity/epiphany style revelation of ‘this is what it’s all about’ complete with the booming voice of reason…but with…

life…just life

…and it’s great and complete and boring and fabulous and sometimes makes you want to kill it and it’s hilarious and tiring and not always wondrously financial – but you’re here, and you made it.

Having moved to Sevilla…

Sevilla, unlike my initial and stereotype-fuelled fantasies, is not laden with dancing locals and instant friends on every corner.  I haven’t heard anyone say ‘Olé!’ except for a guitar playing gypsy in a bar (fine, that’s pretty Andalucian right there!) and not one local has actually been able to tell me where to find a flamenco show.

Fortunately, these things are not what brought me here in the first place…but rather looking  for a change of place for the city-ness that is Barcelona.  And a change it’s been…!

Barcelona is famous for being slightly left of centre, a little off, full of tourists, much more ‘cosmopolitan’ than the rest of Spain.  Sevilla, despite the lack of stereotypes in everyday life, is famous for being much more ‘Spanish’.  It’s hotter for one.  There’s a functioning bullring and a LOT  more jamón as well.  And the people do certainly love a holiday, though they’re quick to retaliate if you accuse them of not liking to work!

One such excuse for not working – the Semana Santa – finished week or so ago.  This was certainly a spectacle, if an incredibly inconvenient one.  Essentially, throughout the week, thousands of people flock to the streets to watch floats (tronos) bearing Jesus or one of the many Virgens pass by.  After feeling suitable pious, they drink their body weight (the sight of the rubbish, both normal and human in the streets afterwards is pretty filthy).

A paso in Triana - famous for being livelier, less solemn...

The process is simple, but takes months of preparation.  The tronos are carried by 40 – 60 men who are hidden underneath, each armed with a rolled up teatowel bunched behind their head to cushion the pressure of the 35 odd kilograms each much bear as they walk slowly down the streets for hours at a time.  Golden, covered in roses and candles, the tronos are a beautiful sight, though a slightly unnerving one, what with the vacant expression and glassy tears of the Virgen atop.  Leading and following the trono are hundreds of men (and lately, women) who walk with the trono for an average time of six hours.  Dressed not unlike the Ku Klux Klan and bearing metre-long candles, they sometimes walk barefoot and are not allowed to speak to the public.  Citing ‘penance’, these small irritations seem fair enough, but upon further chats with locals, it become difficult to gather if participation is in fact for relgious purposes, or out of habit or family tradition.  But regardless of their motives, the Nazarenos (or ‘cone heads’ for those less aware!) provide their fair share of nuisance when tries to cross the city.

Nazarenos from El Cachorro

I’d been warned before the first Monday that once in, you were in.  I was told that people arrive, sit on their inherited deck chair (really!) and plant for the next few hours, occasionally puntuated by a beer.  It seemed that if you’re unlucky – and unlucky you would be, as the compulsory route cuts the city in half – you’d be stuck in a throng at some point.  That you couldn’t simply barge nor talk your way out of such crowds once in.  I didn’t believe these warnings.  “I’ve got recent experience in clubs, I’m an expert crowd barger!” I thought.  Not so.  Old crotchety ladies – those not rich enough to have inherited a deck chair – have waited for hours to watch Jesus or their favourite Virgen pass, and they’re armed with umbrellas and evil expressions should you attempt to cross them.  The conversations I overheard (“I’ve been here for three hours and these tourists just come in and stand in front of everyone…”) were all about.  I, on the other hand, was NOT trying to steal view, but actually get out of the way.  Not possible, it seemed – and worse for the locals, as I’m often double their height!

Despite these fairly inconvenient elements, it’s definitely a beautiful sight, especially at night after a glass of wine and out of the reach of the hoooooooot sun.  Just bring an umbrella to poke the grumpy old ladies in the backs of the calves and you’ll be fine!

His procession won't start for another hour or so...

25 Random

Some friends started a trend wherein each would write 25 random things about themselves, and send it to 25 friends.  Such a task in boredom and self absorption actually took longer to complete than I imagined, making me wonder if there were even 25 things to say about myself!  Knowing that it was an exercise in vanity didn´t stop me having a go however….

25 RANDOM

1. I have only recently (as in, during the past two weeks), learned how to make good rice. Before, it was either gluggy and gross, or one mass of charred grain. I had asked many people and received as many different methods so as to almost drive me insane. Suffice to say, current rice cooking successes are making me very happy… 2. I cannot roll my ‘Rs’, despite living in a country wherein a Romantic language is spoken, and this skill is necessary and intrinsic to the hotness of the words. 3. Because they’re easy to wear, and everyone likes a little breeze, I declared last summer the ‘Summer of the Dress’. This proved to be so awesome that summer ’09 will bear the same name, only be better. 4. If a room is completely dark, I will sleep so deeply and will simply not wake up until someone roughly pushes me. Being left alone, sleeping and unpushed in a darkened room may prove to be my untimate undoing… 5. Waking me up is very difficult indeed. 6. I really want to learn Japanese and am peeved, though find it appropriate, that the only sentence from school I remember is ‘Would you like a drink?’ O nomimono wa, ikaga desuka?? 7. When motivated, I will give absolutely everything until the project ends, at which point I suddenly crumple, lying on the ground like a shivering foetus. When not motivated, or when in the beginning stages of being waaaaaay out of my comfort zone, I freeze a little. But I just need good expresso or a strong hug to get up again. 8. I think I could happily be a student for ever, accumulating a great number of degrees in differing areas and a giant swollen cerebellum to match. 9. I believe coffee to be the juice of the gods. 10. I was named after M*A*S*H character BJ Hunnicutt´s unseen daughter. 11. ‘I’m Yours’ by Jason Mzrak (or however you might spell his name) will always make me smile, despite others believing it to be corny dribble. 12. My second toes on both feet are longer than my big toes, even more so on my right foot. 13. South America is calling me. 14. I’m fairly physically uncoordinated. 15. If made President, I would introduce a ‘travel and lifestyle’ grant for all young people. Like, a year’s wage to fund an overseas jaunt to any country for any purpose before that age of 30. 16. I hope that becoming President wouldn´t make me drunk with power. 17. Upon stepping into a train or Metro, I will immediately become really sleepy. I think it’s all the warmth and rocking. This makes me think that I must have been a great unborn baby, sleeping the entire 9 months before birth. 18. I was a little obsessive compulsive as a child. Went through a phase of having to touch things with both my left and right hand. Also had one of those touch lights that goes through three degrees of light intensity when you touch the gold parts. That provided lots of stress I can tell you, as of course, I had a certain number of times that I had to touch it. I didn’t actually believe anything awful would happen if I didn’t touch it though. All this, has thankfully passed…. 19. I’m so very, very indecisive. Give me options and I’m lost, as all the pros gleam like new tins of Milo, and I don’t know which metallic lid to whack with my spoon first making that delicious *pop* sound. But once sold, I’m so sold. 20. I like the concept of tattoos, but doubt very much that I’ll ever actually get one. It’s not the where (up the spine), so much as the whaaaaaaaat would I doooooo?? 21. I have three brothers, and always wanted a sister. When I was at primary school, my very catholic friends started praying that my little brother would be born a girl, even after science had proved that impossible. Mum and Dad took me to Mt Cootha, feed me silly on a pizza and Coke twilight picnic, and broke the XY news. I bawled. 22. Sometimes I wonder what the point of it all is, but I do actually, truthfully, really, truly think it’s all going to be just fine. 23. Having realised that the world is geared and designed for those with computers, I’ve decided that I must partake of the convenience of owning one. Mac it shall be. Money shall be sought. 24. Being almost 180cm, I never learned how to walk in heels as I look positively giant when encased in them. Yet, as they’re hot, I occasionally try. Yesterday was one such occasion. I went out clubbing with friends in heeled boots and towered a head and sometimes shoulders over the small Spaniards who habit these parts. It was simultaneously fascinating and off-putting. 25. I totally wrote these 25 things over four sessions.

When boots die…

Last Sunday night, I was walking to work in the rain (my Metro ticket had recently expired, but that´s beside the point!) when I was alerted to a strange, uncomfortable, even unpleasant sensation in my shoe.  No more that a few seconds interlude was needed to identify the source as being a healthy dose of sludgy, street-born rain water, seeping ever so carefully through a hole in my boot´s sole, that up until that point I hadn´t known existed.  Carefully staunching the cry that attempted to escape my lips (these were not only boots, but old friends…black, slouched, pointed-toe wonders that had cost me $8, 5 years earlier and survived international travel, snow and the physical attacks of small children), I wandered on, feigning a sort of dry-socked comfort and dodging the night’s first wave of battered, drunken tourits.  Arriving at work and changing my old friends for a pair of grubby sneakers, I wondered if I should thank the winter rain for alerting me to the fact that my boots had succumed; or curse it for allowing that information to penetrate my happy relationship with them.  This was not the first time the rain had advised me of a well-formed hole in a loved pair of shoes; and the fact that the first pair lost to me were still sitting in my wardrobe 18 months after their demise (so unenthusiastic was I to part with them), seemed only to suggest that my mourning period for these boots would be long indeed.  Friends (particularly those whose finances, like mine, limit them to bargain shopping) suggested becoming close friends with Gaffer tape.  But, as my boots’ lining carked it several months ago, I’m wasn´t convinced that the supposed thousand uses of our friend Gaff could stretch to breathing life back into footware so clearly past its prime.

Why is it that sometimes we don´t realise that a situation, relationship or hope is flawed until rudely awakened to the fact?  Why don´t we look closer, harder, more frequently, more fervently?  Through  earlier inspection, we may repair boots before holes develop; remember that we have a saucepan on the stove before the meal burns; maintain good relationships with friends before their previously cute idiosyncracies become itching annoyances; or with partners before potential cheaters succumb to temptation.  Or, could looking closer, harder, more frequently, more fervently be construed as obsession, as unhealthy…as an inability to throw up your hands and just go with the flow, seeing  how things work out.

For now, my black, slouched, pointed-toe wonders sit next to my zippy sky-blue Converse in the bottom of my wardrobe; my toast is still bread; and my friends’ idiosyncracies remain cute.

Weather patterns and SMSs

It´s been a week since I arrived back in Barcelona, and I can finally almost claim competence in the art of rugging one’s self up against the cold.  Though I don’t do it as well as the almost spherical pidgeons (so fluffed up are they) that I walk past each day, I can now leave my front door without immediately gasping and hopping straight back over the threshold, ice-block hands sheltering in my satchel.  I arrived back to a naked city (in the sense of course of leafless trees rather than clothesless people!) whose criss-crossed streets seemed suddenly wider, pinker, emptier, after having been stripped of the canopies provided by their avenues of straight trees.

After the culture-slamming shock of exchanging 35 degree humidity and broad Australian accents for 8 degrees and a reminder that I would have to work on my Spanish, I retreated indoors for a day or two to recover from jetlag and psych myself up for the job hunt that promised to chase my curriculum-laden self through the streets for the next few weeks.  This served my need for rest well, and many an odd dream played through my mind…but upon awakening, my status as an informed citizen of the city proved somewhat questionable.  Having emerged bleary-eyed from my hibernation, I was rather embarassed to discover the extent of my ignorance regarding the wretched weather Barcelona – or really, Spain – had been suffering…and will here admit that yes, I was actually informed of the howling gale outside my window not by my own eyes, no, but by an sms sent to me by my father in Australia.  I was sleeping deeply you see, and sleeping deeply is something that I do very, very well.  Very well.  In normal circumstances; let alone flying and waiting and eating and scratching and stretching on delayed flights for 45 hours straight.  I returned said sms with another, whose relaxed air (‘yes, of course, the weather’s fine, no i’m not hurt, why should I be?’) breathed a sort of  confused, yet nonchalant unflappability which continued until I turned on the news that night to learn that four children outside the city had died when the small stadium in which they were playing baseball in fell on them under the pressing magnitude of 200km/hr winds.

This is a city in which it’s easy to forget ones self …never more so than when you have just arrived back in it.  It’s an anthill, a rabbit warren in those images’ realest sense.  A seething mass of humanity surviving, sometimes only just, in a series of vastly different, yet strangely identical neighbourhoods.  Tiny streets divide crumbling buildings upon which precariously pegged fluroescent washing hangs on for dear life.  Old ladies walk in twos, the same fur coats and slash of red lipstick that once attracted their long dead husbands still adorning their faces and bodies as they did 50 years ago.  The language is screamed, shot out of mouths like metallic, verbal bullets.  Bottles of beer sit finished upon terrace tables at 8am, not from the night before, but from the morning just entered.  I’ve returned, but it seems that my physical self, or my…something…is still following me; perhaps still sitting, waiting and wondering on the 6 hour delayed flight that brought the rest of me here.  I hope that it – whatever it is that is yet to arrive - is making itself at home on that plane: ordering itself another (this time unecessary) bottle of sparkling, going nuts with its teeny-tiny personal television and laughing quietly at the compartmentalised dinner it’s being served…because when it arrives here…I’m going to need it shiny, polished, glittery golden and ready to go.