How Not To Do Life & Other Stories

You know those days when things just do not go according to plan? When you know if you'd just done something a little different your life would be much easier? Well, that's been my afternoon.

I faffed around for so long deciding whether or not to go shopping before my tea date that by the time I'd made my mind up to do said shopping, I no longer had time to get to the station and catch the train.

One missed train.

So I decided to get the next train which would just leave me enough time before meeting people to go and look at new running shoes. I successfully got myself ready on time, grabbed my phone and keys and was about to leave the house when the time on my phone showed me that the clock in my room was 10 minutes late, and that I was going to miss my train.

Two missed trains.

I'll get the next one, I said, the 14:47, I said. I waited ten minutes and then left, pre-empting a full car park by heading straight for the overflow one. Ironically, the overflow was overflowing, and the station car park had plenty of space. I would still have caught the train if it had been at 14:47, but sadly it was at 14:43 and it wasn't meant to be.

Three missed trains.

The proverbial straw was checking the board of London train times and realising there had been two trains between the second and third missed trains, and that if I had left home as soon as I was ready, I wouldn't already be half an hour late an hour and ten minutes before I was meant to arrive.

I'm standing on the platform waiting for the tube, so I can see the funny side of missing five trains now. Sort of.

However, the one good point of my day so far (and also what was meant to be the subject of this post) is that after years of shunning hair dryers because (in my not-so-expert hands) they transform my wet-and-full-of-potential hair into that of my year eight maths teacher, I have found the answer: hair oil. In ten minutes, with a pea-sized blob of argan oil that I bought from a market in Morocco, I went from damp-and-frizzy to silky-swishy-volume. No longer will I contemplate not washing my hair after running just because it looks more acceptable sweaty but straight than it does clean but hedge-dragged. Reader, I may be incapable of catching trains, but I have possibly just revolutionised my life.