time's fool / Ab Fab

1. My PhD student graduated on Monday. She is very gifted and absolutely fabulous and looked lovely even in the heavy golden curtain-fabric gown and silly hat. It is 10 years since she began to study with me as an undergraduate - along with 2 other students who have, since then, been amongst her very best friends, and who were also there on Monday. 10 years which feels like about ... 27.

2. Also on Monday, I took LG along to my hairdresser and paid a worthwhile £28 for a new look. LG had declared that she wanted an "80's" haircut. She said it as if thats a good thing. Aghast. I. Was.

We'd dyed her hair a dark reddish purple a couple of weeks previously. Here is her new colour.


With her new haircut I, myself, would look like Suzi Quattro or Rod Stewart in a Very Bad couldn'tletgoofthe80's sort of way.

Little Gem herself looks great, in a Noel Fielding/Mighty Boosh sort of way. She keeps saying "Don't touch the hair!"

The 80's feels like about 43 years ago, but it looks ab fab on LG.

3. On Thursday I went to a funeral, the 3rd in 6 months. A colleague (and friend) with whom I've worked for the past 10 years or more died completely unexpectedly 2 weeks ago, in her sleep, at the age of 56. No cause of death as yet identified. One half of my brain has been busily sorting out cover for her teaching and thinking through curriculum and teaching implications for the future. The other half of my brain expects to see her walking across the campus next week. At the funeral I met up with some past students who I've not seen for many years. In other, happier circumstances it would have been fabulous to see them again.

4. Also on Thursday a best friend Lucy - RW - arrived to stay for a brief visit. (Far too brief, RW, please take note) Her daughter also has a rather 80's haircut. And also looks fab. RW moved from conveniently just around the corner to Ipswich (only an hour or two away, but thats an hour or two too much) just about 2 years ago. Just at a point where my life began to fall apart in a number of ways. Its 2 years which has felt like 22 years - and, strangely, also like about 2 days.

5. On Friday I went to an ab fab graduation party at my student's house in East London. There was much dressing-up in her doctoral robes (hired, but she gets to keep them for a week of fun and frolic), great food, fine wines, cake, dancing and lovely lovely people. I travelled there by bus, having first crossed the Thames via the Woolwich ferry. We used to travel regularly from South to North-East London when I was a child, to visit grandparents; our usual route took us under the river through the Blackwall tunnel, but for a treat we would come back on the Woolwich ferry, eating chips. I had fun with my camera, of course.






6. A final blast from the past this week was my return trip from the party. A friend gave me a lift back home on the back of his motorbike. The roads were very quiet, it being about 2am. We came back through the tunnel.
I had a boyfriend when I was about 20 who had a Honda 750 (quite impressive in those days). I'd been on the rebound from a disastrously messy break-up and trapped living on campus. He had impressive wheels and offered some escape. I still remember that sinking feeling when he bought me biking leathers for my birthday and the realisation hit me that I didn't want to be with him at all really and would have to try to be both honest and kind. Which proved not to be possible.
But the motorbike was great! The memory now has chilly edges when I think of the way I dozed off sometimes, leaning against his back, at speeds well over the limit. I've not been on a motorbike since then - it was an ab fab way to get home last night.





The helmet, borrowed from my host, had also not been on the back of a bike for over 20 years. Does it look its age? or does it look ab fab?