Breakfast the Seventy-First

Jelly and sprite.

Jelly truly is a magical thing. I don't know why, but it's all I wanted to eat once I'd started to feel a little less green. Another magical thing, or person rather, is the incomparable Miss Girling who came round yesterday with sprite and daffodils to make me feel better. I had real food for supper this evening -- hurrah!

I'm currently half-watching The Great British Hairdresser. Half my attention is much more than it deserves. How can anyone take hair so seriously? I'm not sure I've ever seen anything more preposterous in my life. It actually reminds me a little of a visit from a hairdresser to our school for a PSE (Personal and Social Education) lesson. I don't know what the school was thinking. They imported some badger-haired stylist who berated us -- a bunch of twelve year olds -- for having hair not hairstyles...

Come to think of it, PSE lessons were pretty preposterous too. In addition to the hairdresser lesson, we were also taught how to pack a suitcase, and filled in on the wonders of the rhythm method by a woman pregnant with her 100th child. (Catholic school - what can you do?)

Breakfast the Fourth

Muesli with banana, yoghurt and honey.

Today I had two glasses of wine. Apparently this was sufficient alcohol to prompt me to reminisce about the school nurse's preoccupation with cystitis: whatever the ailment – sprained ankle, soar throat – a visit to the infirmary always elicited the question "does it burn when you pee?"

It was also enough wine to convince me to share my head-lice story... When I was about 13, I went to the nurse telling her that I was pretty sure I had nits; because attention seeking was rather rife at my school (all those homesick girls I suppose), she sent me on my way. Bizarre really as if I had been after sympathy I would have concocted a rather more romantic affliction – consumption perhaps. By the time she finally believed me, the infestation was such that I required pints and pints of head-lice shampoo (my hair was very long). And woke up the following morning to a nit Somme on my pillow.

I don't know how we got onto the subject of school nurses.