Hairspray

I’ve been in mourning lately. I get like this with the summers end. It happens sometime in April when the denial of winters coming can no longer be ignored. It happens every year, I spend most of March anxious about it grabbing at every last second of sun and being outdoors as much as I can. I suffer from the cold, badly. I’ve always had lousy circulation; I blame this on my mother. I have vivid childhood memories of she and her sisters crowded around our fireplace, desperate for the prime position over the grate, even my Mum and the cat would fight it out, the cat generally winning. Now I do the same, in winter you will find me plonked in front of the closest heater being spooned by my dog, striving to warm my luke-warm blood.

As a moderately appropriate aside to the former comment, I recently saw that 'Twilight' movie, there is no romanticism for me about being with a vampire, no matter how much the broody and pensive soul might appeal to my sensibilities, the idea of cuddling up to something so stone-like and cold in the summer is at best unappealing, the idea of doing it in the winter is utterly repulsive, sans blood-sucking, death potential.

My enemy status with the cold saw me bail on the UK to return to Australia, about to go into a third winter. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the UK, I even loved London. I spent a good deal of that time in a little attic room, above a pub in Kentish Town where I lived and worked from time to time. I was even occasionally paid in cherry brandy to host the Monday night trivia, I would have done it happily without the brandy, although it would have been rude to say no, especially given its, ermm, warming properties. I’ve never been 100% sure why I look so fondly on that period of my life, fun as it was, I feel like it was some way the autumn of my existence. I was, by this time 23 and the incarnation of the person I always thought I wanted to be when I was 17. I was the essence of a free spirit. Dressed in my cheesecloth skirts and oversized hippie flares, sporting some kind of Mohawk arrangement, I dotted about doing various jobs that even included a stint as a tour guide. I went about my day with a periphery of eccentric characters to inspire and enlighten and The Mixer, arguably Camden’s finest pub, was a second home to me and Dana, easily the most fascinating person I’ve ever met not to mention the quintessential free spirit. Every month I would pack the bare essentials into a day pack and be on my way to some fringe festival out of town, musical festival in continental Europe or some random “right of passage” event that would make for a good story to anyone that read my bulk updates back home. Until the cold set in anyway.

This is where we get to my mourning. Lately, I feel like my inner 17 year old has finally passed on. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not one to look on my teenage years fondly, I was at best, an awkward teenager, in truth, I was a fugly teenager, with a very misguided (never-the-less fun) sense of what was cool, bad hair, colourful braces, glasses, matched with an over-inflated sense of social anxiety and my fair share of insecurities that seem to be part of a teenage girls genetic make-up. My only redeeming factor was my ten hole, Doc Marten’s that were my much coveted 17th birthday present and which my father, to this day, refers to my “Gestapo boots”. Yes, I still wear them, with the same sense of pride and the same purple laces as when they first graced my foot. But, these were the times when I had the most idle time to think about where I was going, what I was going to do and who I was going to be. I had a great many ideas of what I was going to be, but who was always unfaltering, I would be me. Is it possible that I have gone against my own grain?

This was somewhat emphaised last week when I was pulled aside by my boss, informally, and spoken to about my hair. A haircut I incidentally presumed was relatively conservative by not just by my own standards, appeared misjudged. My boss who in all fairness did try and broach the subject in as “cool” a way as he knew how, told me it was considered inappropriate. I honestly didn’t see this coming, I already thought I’d sold out to 'the man', dressed that very day in a brand new suit that I had bought with the funds I would have spend on better ACDC tickets, had I not been trying so hard to conform.

The only saving grace that I can think of is that my boss, who isn’t aware of just how like my own father he is in the way he relates to me, didn’t ask me outright, he did it a way that left the final decision up to myself. If I am on cue here, and reading the conversational nuances correctly, he appeased my stubborn streak knowing that a better resolution would be achieved in the asking and not the telling. Or did I just dupe myself into towing the corporate line?

The hair is really just transference. I’m not really that bothered no matter how much I’ve played it up for laughs, I already had a penchant for wigs that I am now more than encouraged to indulge, what bothers me most was that I didn’t fight it. After a few tears, that were a by-product of yet another 'transferred issue', I was able to put it in perspective, this haircut, it is a path to a pre-Christmas pit stop in New York, a conduit to keeping my heater going, an opportunity to build on my miserable $2.75 savings account, a means to an end to pay for my white water rafting expedition this August in NZ. And yes, I am deeply aware that my seasonal choice was a markedly stupid one, but where was the 17 year old me, begging me to be true to myself, to not give into the masses?

Now the question is? Did watching 2009’s answer to the angst ridden The Crow of my own teenage years on a bleak and raining Sunday in June, feeling ill and cold, (always cold), exacerbate my goth-like pseudo-funeral of my soul? Or is the girl of my youth really dead? Have I deviated so far from the plan? I guess the most important question of all has to be, would the Erin of 1999 have been proud of the 27 year old she will have become at the close of this year? I haven’t decided yet, but let’s see if she resurrects herself before her potential ten year anniversary, crazy hair or no.