Pointless dinosaurs and lofts

Well I had a very busy weekend and managed to complete the full replumb of a friends flat as planned. Lots of crawling through loft spaces and puzzling over pipe runs is generally a good weekend for me. Every evening has resulted in my bed calling to me early and I was concerned that I would have to ring the water board and warn them before letting my bath water (perhaps more accurately sludge) out.

Despite all of the hard work or perhaps because of it I have had a sense of futility of late that I am struggling to shift. I can see the achievements made over the weekend or the week before, they are tangible whether spreadsheets and reports or basins and tanks, but I am not seeing the personal purpose. I can see that somebody has a report or can now have a shower but am acutely aware that if I hadn’t achieved those tasks then somebody else would have.

The world around us is amazing at feeding into our feelings, almost interactively drawing us to views and images that work with our current mindset. So it is that this week I seem to be awash with happy couples and famines, people building something and something that is shared by somebody else. I know, of course, that this is just a mental filter. There is no sudden rush of marriages or childbirth I am simply tuned to that wavelength at the moment and, like most things, it will pass.

So if you see me glazing over and wonder where my mind is wandering to then the answer is the simple futility of well everything. . .

On a lighter note for anyone who has ever visited the wonderful Blackgang Chine on the isle of wight whether as a child or, as I did, as a parent take a look at this excellent video to see where the fibreglass giants of childhoods go:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nLWTtwIS5xg

Girly shed painting and funny looks

Once again I have to take my hat, well my cap, off to the female of the species. How it is that you cope with the complexities of hair and skin care alone astounds me and that’s before you balance on high heels! After spending far too much time in the hair care aisle debating the relative merits of BoJo and Tenko bean extract I thought that I had least reached stability with my hair, I was naive. My hairbrush has adopted the performance of a combine harvester and the merest sight of it cause my hair to exit stage left.

Hair loss alone would be too easy though, where’s the multi-tasking fun in that after all? A little dermatitis makes for a great complication because conditioner aggravates it and if you don’t wash your hair at least daily you look like you have dandruff. In fact the healthiest my hair has looked in months was after a week off work wearing a baseball cap. Well I say looked healthy but that was only until I brushed it. A bit of research told me that the answer was a shampoo called T-Gel and it was my mission to purchase some today on the way to work, simple enough or it should have been. I headed to Boots whilst in London waiting for my train and found the product, that bit was easy. The look of sympathy I got from the girl at the checkout when purchasing specialist shampoo surprised me until I realised that I am missing a significant portion of an eyebrow. So if the checkout girl from Boots read this then can I just say it’s ok I know it won’t fix that!

After unpacking in my hotel room I ironed my shirts and then hit the shower, oh what joy. First I shampooed with the T-Gel, have you ever used this stuff? At first I was convinced that Boots girl wasn’t showing sympathy she was laughing at the man who brought the joke shampoo. It smells like creosote, not a little bit but as if it was a summer day painting the shed. I persevered and left it for a few minutes as directed and then rinsed it off, so far so good but my hair had taken on a straw like texture. Now apparently you have to repeat this process but here it gets technical, well more technical than I can do. The second wash was as if the fire brigade had dosed me in foam it was like I was having my own foam party in the shower whilst creosoting the walls! Now all you clever women  will explain that this is because my hair was clean  and I didn’t need as much second time around but where was that on the bloody instructions eh? Why is it all in a secret code somewhere, who teaches you this stuff!

Having hosed several gallons, is that the correct measure, of creosote foam from my hair and still not sure if I had changed colour to a deep Ronseal chestnut, I was ready to give up. But now my hair had grown into a straw like mess so I had to attack it with a couple of doses of conditioner. Now the creosote people say that I should use 2-3 times a week so I’m thinking that I should warn the water board.