De-tangling Spray

Last week was a very busy one indeed, which involved fitting what for me would normally be about a months worth of engagements into 7 days. It ended with an interesting experience at a performance art event on Saturday, though unfortunately not an entirely successful experience. Suffice it to say that my performance, in a piece of work devised by my friend Kate Wiggs, almost certainly did not come across to the audience as actually being a performance. I strongly suspect that anyone who was lucky enough to witness it will have just thought that I was genuinely unhinged, and have been very glad when I left the building. The main problem was that the set-up of the event did not lend itself to the way of performing the work that Kate had envisaged, as she wanted the performance to be unannounced and surreptitious, but the room was laid out for a programme of formal pieces to be performed in front of a seated audience.

Earlier during the same the event, I'd also managed to embarrass myself severely when someone I recognised said hello to Kate and me, and I said I was sure I'd met him or seen his work at another show, only then for it to click in my brain that the reason I recognised his face and name was that he is in fact an extremely famous artist, and I most probably had seen him on television. Luckily he turned out to be a lovely person and was very kind to me.

Since this entry comes only a month after my first post, in which I detail the horror of my unstoppable flood of tears on New Years Day, I am becoming slightly concerned that this blog will mainly end up being a catalogue of my social awkwardness and ineptitude.

The combination of these mortifying experiences has reminded me of an occasion when I was about 4 years old and got confused about something, and as a result made a statement in front of my parents and their friends which I then realised to be factually inaccurate. I can't remember what it was now, and no one else seemed to have even noticed, but I do remember being so embarrassed that I resolved to hide myself away and never speak again. It didn't last for long however, as I soon discovered that my attempt at becoming invisible was in fact serving only to draw far more attention to myself.

Yesterday I managed to have a much needed day of recovery, one of the highlights of which was sitting in the bath with a comb and a bottle of de-tangling spray, attacking the sections of my hair which had matted themselves quite spectacularly in the 3 days when I'd simply had no time to give my hair any proper attention. The spray is apple-scented and is intended for small children. It has a picture of a wild-haired monster on the bottle.