Malone is the quirky oddball and always will be

I’m the type of woman who can never zip her handbag. Everything is always spilling out as I delude myself that I am the kind of woman who needs to carry only a few essentials. When in fact my ‘essentials’ seem to include; A heavy duty steel locker key, (just in case I ever go to the gym again, even though I joined six months ago); Three asthma inhalers as I’m paranoid I’ll have that once in a decade attack, (I’m always telling people ‘that actress off Four Weddings And A Funeral died of an asthma attack y’know’); And always a few letters from school about tree planting or fetes, that I plan to read on the bus, but never do. They forever remain in my bag, finally forming their own paper-mache escape plan to mush into ornamental masks and flee to the border (of Brighton and Hove) and hide in charity shops until they find new lives. I got this handbag in a charity shop… Oh I long to be the kind of woman who can actually close her handbag. Neat and tidy and groomed. I’ve started a college course, they all have neat glossy brushed straight hair and tidy clothes. Even when scraped back, my curly hair escapes the clutches of the clip/band and springs out to say ‘hey, I’m the quirky oddball!’ I reckon even if I was styled head to toe in Prada I would still look like a scarecrow had taken up sewing. Is this why my mum has blow dried straight her hair everyday for 40 years? Curly hair says ‘I’m kooky!’ ‘I’m messy’, ‘don’t give me the job I’ll quit in three months and leave your paperclips in a right state’. My little girl has inherited my scraggy man. Shopkeepers say things like ‘she has your hair’, then stare, waiting for a reply other than ‘yes’. I just want to buy a Mango Rubicon I don’t want a conversation about genetics. I usually banter, ‘yes I don’t know where she gets it from!’ Then I laugh really hard to emphasise that is the punchline and that conversation about hair has ended.

“I reckon even if I was styled head to toe in Prada I would still look like a scarecrow had taken up sewing”

Once I was writing my column in a cafe and a man cycled past then dismounted just to shout ‘I like your hair’ and then cycled off again… (gotta love St James Street), it’s just dead keratin cells. Its handy for school because often her hair looks good even without doing a single thing to it, but then it builds up a nest of tangles underneath the curls, that only cutting the knots out will cure. My little girl would love it if I cut all her hair off. She despises me brushing it, but her golden locks of dead keratin do make her look cute, bit scarecrowey, but cute. If I straighten my hair will people take me more seriously? I don’t know, but I reckon I need a new handbag.