134: How to Spend Money

I’m secretly curious about what it would be like to be bald.

Baldness is not necessarily the preserve of old men. I’ve been on line, investigating head coverings, for fear that my own imminent baldness should cause others to run for the hills. My sleuthing has revealed a world, of wigs and turbans and scarf tying lessons, that I’m now watching on repeat. I don’t yet care too much about losing my hair, but I imagine that there are just some settings when covering up is the right thing to do and I might care when it happens.

“You want a wig?” the woman on the other end of the phone said in a tone which was rather more of a statement that a question.
“ehhh,”
“What’s your postcode?”
“Who is this?” I asked, because no one has ever said that as a form of introduction when I answer the phone.
“I’m sending you a catalogue.”
“But who are you?”
“You got a referral for a wig.”
“But who are you?”
“Well who are you?” she said.
“This is Anna speaking. You called me, but I don’t know who you are.”
“It’s me Marjorie, the wig lady. I’m sending you the catalogue. What’s your address?”
I asked for the link and she explained that the company don’t have a website but send out catalogues. “I’m looking at their website now,” I said, after a bit of swift manoeuvring. She sent me a catalogue anyway.

Wigs are affordable and modelled by people in poses and styles that look as if we are going through a 1970’s revival. The wigs themselves look as if they are made of nylon and might spark if you move too quickly or pull a synthetic sweater over your head. After all this bother of surgery and chemo it would be a pity to accidentally set fire to myself. They are all in colours that I have never seen, not even in Bulgaria where I have seen some terrible home hair dye jobs. I put the catalogue in the pile of cancer gubbins and went back on line to look for something a bit more stylish.

There are no end of shopping opportunities if you have cancer. There is everything from moisturisers to cooling spritzers for the face. There is at least one person, I can think of, who would happily perform the same service for free and chuck a bucket of water over me. In the end I settled for a squidgy thing to wrap around seatbelts. You never know. Someone might be prepared to drive me to a layby for a sandwich now that we are back in the 1970s.

Marjorie called back to give me driving directions to the appointment I never made tomorrow at 1pm. “I’m sure I don’t have an appointment,” I said. She thought the stress of cancer had made me forget and carried on with directions.
“I’m blind,” I interrupted. It seemed the best way to put the brakes on things.
“Then turn left,” she persisted.
“I can’t drive,” I said firmly.
“But you’ve made this appointment. How are you going to get there?”
“Honestly,” I said. “I can’t remember making an appointment.”
“Are you Heather?” she said.
“No. I’m Anna.”
“I’ve got the wrong person,” she muttered, and put the phone down.

Giving up on wigs, I went to buy fabric to weave myself magnificent headgear but came home with a lampshade. I suppose I could always put that over my head.

The BF, knowing my love of all things garden, sent me a link to a well-known cancer charity, from whose on-line shop you can buy a gnome.

END

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Image is Siobhain Santry's sketch of Anna.