We are belatedly getting a touch of winter. Today was cold, and I didn't go outside except to scuttle from one building to another. The Systems Administrator went out to cut wood, and came back in with aching sinuses.
I was in Colchester for my six weekly haircut. Happy are those who can carry off shoulder length hair, and can get away with a six monthly tidy of their split ends. When I was young and had longish hair I could kid myself I looked like a Burne Jones angel, but nowadays I look more like Gandalf if I let my hair get anywhere near my collar. A short crop it has to be, and a great deal of credit is due to my hairdresser who can make a short cut just about last six weeks without the aid of blow drying or any styling products whatsoever in the intervening period. Other, lesser hairdressers have suggested that such a thing was not possible, but Naomi is made of sterner stuff, and by the time I ambled through her doors this morning I looked vaguely fluffy, but not entirely like a chrysanthemum*.
While I was in town I met a friend for coffee. We tried a newish cafe which has sprung up in the High Street. She said it opened six months ago, though I never noticed it when I was in Colchester for Christmas shopping. The decor was shabby industrial chic, with exposed metal tracks for the wiring and galvanised lamp shades, and the music was rather loud. My friend asked the waitress if it could be turned down at all, but the waitress looked doubtful and said that it had to be at a certain volume for breakfast. Er, why? Who do they think comes into the sort of cafe that charges nearly three pounds for coffee and over four pounds for granola, at eleven o'clock on a Wednesday morning on Colchester High Street? Retired people, that's who. I was about the youngest customer there, and the music didn't do anything for me.
I told the SA about the music when I got home, and the SA asked whether the new cafe was an independent or part of a chain. I had to admit I didn't know: I hadn't seen the name before but that proved nothing. I hadn't heard of Cote Restaurants until I went to the Covent Garden one with a friend last September, and there are dozens of them. If it was an independent and the staff couldn't control the music then it was dead, opined the SA.
I shall have to go outside tomorrow, since a piece of glass has fallen out of the greenhouse roof and the forecast is for frost tomorrow night. The Telegraph still emails me twice daily, even though I don't subscribe any more, and I wasted one of my free clicks on the alarming headline Lows of minus 15 forecast as severe warnings issued for snow, but it turned out that the minus fifteen applied to the highlands of Scotland. I don't think that counts. They record frosts there every month of the year, except June.
* PG Wodehouse Why don't you get a haircut; you look like a chrysathemum.
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