THE SCIENCE OF THE ARRIVAL OF SUMMER

This thing called summer seems to be creeping in, even if only for about five days before winter returns in full force. Scotland: it may be small, but we like to get in our five-a-day in terms of climate shifts. I know summer's arriving because not only have I been forced out of winter boots, but I haven't even been wearing socks.

See, sometimes the sun even shines at the bus stop. It's nice when that happens.

 Pink is a colour that, as a general rule, I don't feel very comfortable in - the only solidly pink item of clothing I can think of that I regularly wear is a striped t-shirt I sleep in - but for some reason I adore these shoes. They've walked me many a place over the past two or three years without a blister in sight. They are my happy shoes, and break up the solidity of wearing all black for work (I don't particularly like wearing black, either. Colour is complex like that).

It's highly scientific, that forced out my boots = summer reasoning. Similar to when I was about ten and camping in Switzerland. We had a pen which changed colour with the heat from your hand (the outside plastic, not the ink itself. That would've been pretty nifty), and used it to gauge whether or not it was ice-cream weather. If the colour changed with no human contact, solely from the heat of the air, then it was time to waggle it in front of our parents as evidence it was hot enough for ice-cream. It never worked more than once a day, though, because they believed in giving their offspring a varied diet and ice-cream is not a source of complete nutrition. It needs Milka chocolate, little bread rolls bought from the bakery and eaten with Edam cheese or strawberry jam, rosti from a packet cooked on a camping stove, and these amazing pretzel-shaped biscuits with a vanilla glaze to balance it out.

Dammit, I loved those biscuits. They were the Ultimate Biscuit, crisp in places yet soft where the dough folded over itself, with little pools of glaze collected around the knot. Every time we stopped at a bakery for fuel I would instantly home in on those, and I'd always save the middle knot for last.

I promise that is Venice, and not some miniature reproduction built in the kitchen sink.

Oh, and two days after my feet were liberated from their wintry cocoons, I might have taken them to Venice (more on that later, maybe) where not only was it definitely summer, but I completely contradicted myself by falling in love with these jeans which are such a faded red that they're almost bordering on pink.

Let's just blame the power of the pink shoes and not think too deeply about it.

ELBOWS OUT

This song came on the car radio on my way to work the other day:

All of a sudden I was nineteen and it was a Tuesday night and I was dancing in the upstairs room in one of the handful of clubs in the small sea town where I was living.

This song used to drive me mad. It was one of those ones that was played everywhere for a while, and would generally make me grown a little inside. We used to dance like fools to it, surrounded by girls who were trying to look..well..cool, as you do when songs that drive you mad are always played.

It reminds me of a friend who introduced me to the art of 'elbows out'. 'Elbows out' is a defence mechanism - inconspicuously disguised as a dance move - to be used when you find yourself getting squished on an overcrowded dance floor. By incorporating a wriggling of your shoulders, a wriggling which travels down your arms as the elbows are extended outwards in a circular motion, you can gradually expand your bubble of personal space in a seemingly polite manner. An invaluable move, that one, and saved me from  many a squish.

I spent a lot of that year dancing like a fool, and nursing hangovers through Wednesday morning lectures with cartons of chocolate soya milk bought from the health food shop two doors away from my flat. Hangovers happened on other days, too. I just needed that chocolate soya milk on Wednesdays, because listening to a guy ramble on for two hours about the post-modernism of the architecture of supermarkets, or his unending love of chairs, requires a bit of stamina.

POINTLESS INTERLUDE: MONSTER MASHUP

I keep meaning to come back here, but for some reason only have the ability to half write things before being distracted or just trailing off into nothingness. This isn't a bad thing. I'm a bit of a believer in allowing things to fester and remain unfinished until they seemingly find their own endings. With time, things tend to find their own ways of fitting together. Voids are there for a reason.

On an unrelated note, I discovered this little gem today:

You kind of have to love humankind for devoting time to making stuff like this.

THE BALANCE DISRUPTION OF HOLIDAYS

These past few weeks have been somewhat draining, mostly because there exists this thing called a school holiday.

This is what happens if you always find employment as a lowly coffee minion. The main problem with holidays is that people have all this extra free time, leave their houses to do stuff, and expect refreshments. It's the same with weekends. Sometimes, when there's a queue already forming before the doors have been unlocked, I'm tempted to tape a sign up in the window saying "Go home and have Coco Pops for breakfast, please and thank-you" before hiding beneath a chair. Hiding underneath things generally solves a lot of problems, or at least prolongs a state of comfortable denial.

Most times I behave, open the door to greet them, and give them what they want. They never do want Coco Pops, though; not that we sell them. I can't remember the last time I had Coco Pops, but I suspect it was during a random craving where I bought a box, ate them once, realised they're really not as good as my mind thinks they are, and then they sat in the cupboard for a year and a half until they turned soggy and got thrown away. A similar thing happened with Custard Creams, an incident my heart is still a little bit broken over. In my mind they taste fantastic, when in reality they barely even make it to 'meh' on the Biscuit Delectability Scale*.

Because I am a meagre biological organism that has to find time to eat and sleep and brush my teeth there hasn't been much time for drawing, and it started to take its toll, to the point where I had a rather intense and emotional case of Quitting Syndrome and couldn't quite understand why. I always forget how much my sense of balance depends on being able to draw; or, more precisely, on having the time to immerse myself in the physical act of drawing. Ability doesn't really come into this. I just like the doing. I gave up questioning whether I can 'draw' or not quite some time ago. Sometimes I think I can draw, other times I lose all confidence and think everything I've ever done is absolute rubbish and my only real skills lie in being exceptionally efficient at getting stacks of washing up done (really, modesty aside, I'm speedy and thorough. No tea-stained mugs or stubborn bits of stuck-on cheese get past me) and making rather attractive swirling marshmallow and cream mountains on hot chocolates that have the power to awe small children - and occasionally grown men - into silence.

I will get far in life with these talents.

Overall, it's best not to overthink or seriously question any actual drawing ability and just get on with it, because otherwise my sense of balance would just bugger off and I'd be forever lopsided and anxious.

So, after a little bit of this and this during three whole days off in a row...

...I'm back to feeling like a relatively balanced human being who no longer feels an intense desire to quit their job**.

* Which, to be fair, is a damn sight better than Bourbons. Bourbons don't even make it on to the Biscuit Delectability Scale. The scale itself turns and flees at the sight of them. It finds them offensive.

** Why quitting would have helped, I've no idea. But I suspect it has something to do with feeling unbalanced/anxious → feeling trapped → rise in commitment-phobic tendencies = LET'S UPROOT AND BUGGER OFF! Because that is the solution to everything; at least when hiding underneath things is inappropriate, obviously. Or maybe it's because I haven't quit anything for a while and I need to get my quota in.

THE HAIR SCISSORS

There's a pair of scissors that have been around my family for as long as I can remember. They've probably been around longer than I have, and I find that oddly comforting. They're one of those miscellaneous objects which have been a constant throughout life, kept in one of my mother's bedroom drawers when we were small, before navigating to the bathroom as people grew up and required them more often for their own needs. They moved away with my sister when she first moved out, but somehow returned to our family home. They are the Hair Scissors, first used when we were small because our mother didn't want anyone other than her wielding pointy objects at our delicate baby-heads, and later used for trimming fringes that grew too fast to be maintained by a hairdresser.

I always hated having my fringe cut as a child. I hated the newness of a freshly cut edge and preferred it when it hung in my eyes a little and went scraggly. I never really liked proper hairdresser cuts either, not since having my hair cut short aged five and being called an alien by Kenny when I went to school the next day. It wasn't that I looked like an alien (I don't think) but more the fact it was a big change.

My hair hasn't been that short since. And yes, I do blame Kenny*.

Over the years these scissors have become tarnished and aren't as sharp as they should be, but they still work. I found them in the bathroom the other night, hiding amongst shampoo bottles, and I was struck by a sudden urge to cut my hair: it'd reached the unruly straggly stage again.

I do this every six months or so, when the mood strikes. Wrapping sections of hair around my fingers, spiralling it into a rope, I'll skim the Hair Scissors down its length, trimming the escaping broken hairs before haphazardly cutting away the ends. Afterwards I'm always amazed at how much lighter and less tangled it feels, like something has been lifted, and I feel a little less dishevelled and a little more like a 'person' - whatever that means.

At one point, after five years without a trip to a hairdresser (that's probably Kenny's fault too), I told myself I'd get a proper haircut if and when I graduated. The Hair and I had been through quite a bit by that time, and I figured we should see the end of that damn degree together. It's been nearly two years since finally graduating and I still haven't made an appointment. The longer I leave it the more I ask myself why do I really need to go to a hairdresser, and do I really want to?

The simple answer: no, I don't. Not really. It's almost become some quiet act of rebellion against...well, something. Or maybe more of a resistance (and hairdressers scare me ever so slightly). I may feel dishevelled a lot of the time, but dishevelment is where I feel at home. I like my odd lengths and uneven ends, and my hair isn't in too bad of a condition considering it developed dreadlocks for six or so years**. My hair is just how it grows, and I like it that way. It makes me feel more like an animal, as daft as that may sound.

It's now been ten years and three months since I last paid for a haircut, and I think I'll just keep on with the odd culling of ends with the tarnished Hair Scissors that used to cut my baby hair - back when it could pass as blonde - whenever the mood strikes.

* Sometimes I Google the names of people from my childhood out of curiosity, and apparently Kenny is now a journalist, writing for one of the local papers.

** For the record, it is possible to brush dreads out of long hair. You just need a high pain threshold, a lot of conditioner, a fine-toothed comb and a serious amount of spare time. I've also heard whiskey helps, but I can't guarantee how the anaesthetic benefits of intoxication weigh up against coordination impairment since I went sans whiskey. It took a period of three years, attacking one every now and again, usually when stressed out. It's quite a therapeutic process, though each removal did feel like a little death. You grow quite attached to them on an emotional level. Sometimes I miss them, but I also quite like being able to run a comb through my hair (I do that these days, you see. I've heard it prevents dreads). I still have one left -my monster dread. It's a bit of a beast and I'm too lazy to tackle it, but it's also still there because I simply can't bring myself to remove all traces of that part of the history of my hair. I just don't have the heart to erase its existence, so there it lurks, hidden in the depths.