Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

Today I got my hair cut. I thought I'd try out a place in Merton Abbey Mills that looked rather nice. And it was. Very nice, in fact.

The lady who runs it only opened it about 3 months ago. She's only 30 and had worked as a hairdresser for nine years before taking a year off on maternity leave. When it came to going back to work she decided she'd rather open her own place, and I'm very glad she did. It's a small little place so you don't have to shout over other people having their hair dried and she was really friendly and chatty. She was very impressed with our choice of flat, and told me that a certain rather famous England footballer lives in our apartment block too. And also that a bakery and a Thai restaurant will be opening in the Mills in the next couple of weeks, so maybe I won't bother getting a breadmaker after all.

I also attempted to give blood in St George's Hospital in Tooting. They've got a full-time clinic there which is terribly convenient, but I hadn't realised just how important it is to book an appointment - I thought that was just an option if you were very short on time. But the receptionist wasn't very impressed with me just turning up, and icily ignored me for about ten minutes after I told her I didn't have an appointment. Then, oddly, she suddenly melted and was really warm and chatty. Maybe she felt I had completed my penance.

Anyway I couldn't give blood because my iron levels aren't high enough. It's not that they're particularly low, they just need to be quite high before you can give blood. And apparently I can't go back now for four months even though I didn't give any blood! So that's frustrating. I'm thinking of donating platelets too, and mayyybe even bone marrow but I hear that's very unpleasant. Then again, so is dying, and I think I could put up with some unpleasantness to stop someone dying.

Off to Salisbury for the weekend, it's due to be unseasonably warm. Lovely jubbly.