Wednesday 2 December 2009

I Have A New Phone And I Belong

www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com an account of the A Graceful Death Exhibition I am holding in December. Email me for details, address below
www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com to email me

Antonia Rolls can sit at the hairdressers and read her emails on her phone. She is very much At The Cutting Edge and must be contacted and informed 24 hours a day. So she has a new phone that has a touch screen and permanent internet access and she can even do Twitter on it. Yes. Move over Yoko Ono, Antonia Rolls is the Artist now.

I did go to the hairdresser today and I did sit with lots of brown goo on my head and a plastic covering on my shoulders, and use the new phone as a jolly old office computer. I have only just worked out how to stop the keypad making twinkly fairy noises each time I touch it which I have to do to type out messages and make choices. It did sound like a tiny electronic fairy dancing in electronic rain. I knew at the hairdressers that I needed to be fully in control of this wonder gadget, and it wouldn't do to make tinkling noises every time I touched it. So I sorted that. How? I can't remember. Then, after the nice hairdresser had made me some tea, and put some cold brown splodge on my head, I was left to Be Someone. " I can't talk today" I said "I have a controversial exhibition to put on and people may need to email me". So the phone rings and I drop it. Tinkle tinkle splatter and the battery slides under Stout Middle Age Lady With Tints's chair. Because I am In Control and Important I get up and crawl under the Stout Lady's chair assuming she has seen me coming and knows I am getting my battery. But she was reading Hello! and was oblivious to the rest of the salon, until she sees me under her chair keeping my head high because of the Brown Goo on it. "Just getting my battery" I say with exaggerated confidence. She is of the generation who don't have phones and was astonished that I needed a battery at all. For your Heart? I thought she may say. But I held up my New Phone and said from under her chair Ha Ha, for my phone. It was good that I scuttled back then, because I could see her wondering why my phone was under her chair and how could I answer it if it was there?

Back at my seat I read my emails. All from Facebook and from my 19 Year Old Daughter. No matter, I look busy. Then on to Twitter. That is over in a few seconds. Then I got a phone call! And it is from the BBC which I am expecting. I leap out of my chair and go into the washing area (for some reason. It is busier there, and quiet where I was sitting waiting for my brown goo to cover my white hairs) and say Yes! so enthusiastially that everyone looks up thinking Ooh good, she has won the lottery. Let's be nice to her. However, I have to admit that I am at the hairdressers and will have to call back later. The nice man at the other end says OK and I am driven by madness to say And I Will Be Beautiful Then, to which the BBC man says Oh. I am sure you will. And he must put down the phone and say to the other journalists in his office I think that Antonia Rolls is having plastic surgery, not a hair do.

I did call the BBC man back, nothing except work was mentioned, and my hair does look good. The Stout Lady With Tints didn't seem to be affected by the battery under the chair incident, and left the salon looking lovely. She is probably glad she doesn't have to have an all singing all dancing twinkly tinkling phone to do her work on. It probably reinforced her decision to stick with the land line and the postal service.

1 comment:

  1. what a wonderful time at the hairdressers! i fear if my home-visiting hairdresser experiences were as fraught and overflowing i might need time in a dark room alone to recover.

    however, tuesday remains our family home-visit haircut day, despite my new-found anxiety, and we will all be beautiful again.

    love laul

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