Tuesday 14 February 2017

A little distraction

Well, David said that he was going to Cairo for work.  I think he was just avoiding being in the same country as me coming up to a French exam.  It may be that they don't let us know what kind of questions are going to be on the thing, or it could be that I might be a little bit of a perfectionist, but I'm a bit stressed.  A bit, just a bit...okay quite a lot and David would be perfectly justified fleeing the country except that he has to sit the exam when he comes back.

So I'm here with a couple of hours to go and at complete saturation point.  I can't actually remember anything, but that appears to be beside the point.  I very carefully took myself out this morning to try to be calm and had a perfectly nice visit to Muscat City Centre.  I managed to remember to pick up the moisteriser that I had run out of weeks ago (and received a lovely complement about my hair  - it went like this:

Very Lovely Salesgirl (VLS)   "I love your hair, it looks lovely."  Me:  "Thank-you, I grew it myself" (flick) - it should be note that I was wearing it out because the temperature is under 30 degrees.  VLS (completely missing the irony because English is her second, third, fourth or fifith language).  "Better than a salon, don't take it to a salon!"

There, a rather lovely thing to say.  It was especially nice because it came on top of the need to take two or three classes to convince our French class that I am not a blonde.  Non redheads will probably have no clue how astonishingly aweful it is to be called a blonde after years of copping quite a lot of "stuff" for being a redhead.****

Don't get me wrong, I loved being a redhead.  It was sometimes horrid, but mostly it was awesome.  I'm still a redhead, just a grey and white one.  It's weird.  Very weird.  But I refuse to succumb to the dye bottle, and lovely lasses like that VLS help me along the way.

Where was I?  Right, the moisteriser. I remembered the moisteriser because I had time to kill while I waited for a response from Customer Service (via whatsapp, because everything is done via whatsapp here) about getting some bags for my vacuum cleaner.  Apparently shops don't keep that sort of thing anymore (or quite possibly ever) so I needed to contact this random person, who apparently belonged to someone's customer service and he would tell me where to come - in all likelihood that would be Ruwi -50 kms across town and pretty much inpenetrable unless you have some sort of native guide.

After the moisturiser there was the Amouage shop where I discovered that they had just released a new perfume based on cherry blossom and rose - very apropos all things considered.  It is gorgeous, and a bottle came home with me (when I eventually left).  Then came coffee and a little pondering.  There had been no phone call.  Sigh.

Suddenly I was sick of waiting.  Waiting for a vacuum bag for goodness sake. I decided I was not going to drag myself on a 100km round trip in vile traffic when I was going to have to do it this evening as well.  So I went upstairs and bought a new vacuum cleaner - for 20 rial - with a one year warranty.  We're only going to be here one more year and the two hours it would take to get the new one would literally cost me twice that.  Sad but true.

I feel much better now.  Especially after the chiropracter, coffee and cake.  Now for that exam.  But first a gratuitous Bluey shot.


****Before I get gutted by all the blondes I know (including my very lovely youngest sister) I want to be very clear it has nothing to do blonde jokes either.