The Perfect Bikini Diet Plan

It's JUNE! That means most of us are now sweating bullets about our Bikini Diets. Fear not, I present you with The Saucy Cow's (tried and tested) Guide to Bikini Diets.

Day #1: Book a holiday. Accept that unless you end up in a convent-style resort, males are going to see you in a bikini. Many males. Some may even be scottish men. (mmm) Realise that for Braveheart fantasy to realise, must start diet and lay sizzling in the sun like package holiday location goddess.

Day #3: Widely publicise diet. Decide to put yourself under the pressures that celebrities in the spotlight are and attract everyone's attention to the pounds which will soon be dropping off you like flies. Announce it with much aplomb. (''I mean it girls! It is SERIOUSLY going to be just a blade of grass and ice cubes each day from now on!) Take a moment to fantasize about the moment you're so waif like, jealous friends organise intervention, convinced you must have an eating disorder. 

Day #4: Go to the supermarket and spend approximately €4,563,987 on foodstuffs which you have never heard of and aren't really that confident about pronouncing the name of out loud. Be reassured by the fact that most are dull brown in colour and flakey in consistency. This is surely a sign of wholesomeness. Ponder theory that if you eat poo coloured things maybe you can trick your body into thinking they are actual poo and thus bypass middle bit of digestive system and straight out, aka no calories. Stop pondering disgusting things. Skip around supermarket confident that you are intimidating other shoppers with your trendy trolley full of obscure hipster food. Have confidence crushed when you arrive at till and feel checkout girl scrutinising your purchases and appearance and become paranoid that she is thinking ''fat cow is clearly starting a diet to combat her massive arse''. Leave supermarket dejected and practically bankrupt. 

Day #6: Barely started diet but expecting immediate results. Start to view current weight objectively. Sob and wonder how you're so called friends let you waddle around at this horrific weight for so long without mentioning anything. Decide best revenge is to be the new skinny one in the group. Stand in front of mirror naked for awkward amounts of time poking at midriff and imagining horror on scottish men's faces as you emerge from the pool like the Loch Ness Monster. Decide to go for a walk. Feel extremely awkward as you're more than aware you are walking very purposefully but you and everyone knows there really is no purpose to this journey. Return for dog so that you have an excuse. End you & the dog's short-lived but glorious stretch of walks together after a conflict of interests - aka you are interested in going for a walk, dog is interested in rebelling against lead.

Day #7: Start period. Slightly annoyed as this means definitely 100% not pregnant so cannot explain away belly by claiming there is a human being in there. Turn into calorie psychopath due to menstrual turmoil and scream at shelf stacking boy in Dunnes Stores for only stocking ridiculously big apples, and 'does he not know how many extra calories that is?' Cry into muesli (dry, no milk) and accept fact that you can't even embrace your obvious imminent obesity as not jolly enough to pull of being fat person. 

Day #10: Morph back into human girl after your monthly ware-wolf like transformation. Bump into 'friend' who announces with nothing short of fanfares that she's lost 5 pounds. Resist urge to shove her stupid face in your stomach and smother her with your fat. Decide there is now an uneven playing field as there was no need for her to try and loose weight in first place. Make mental note to send her anonymous box of chocolates as sabotage. Decide to go out with the girls. Stumble out of nightclub and raid chipper inhaling carbohydrates like they're going out of fashion. Decide that this is fine, and calories do not count when you're drunk.

Day #11: Feel awful about weeks worth of calories you tore through like starving Ugandan child last night. Wonder if you can profit from your drinking habit and turn into a vodka-skinny girl like Kate Moss circa when she was going out with Pete Doherty, consuming only alcohol units for sustenance. Reconsider when you realise alcohol clouded lifestyle may result in you going out with Pete Doherty type character and this would be devastating, not to mention extremely counter-productive to the whole finding-your-scottish-dreamboat plan so may as well go out an eat bun as pursue that idea. 

Day #14: Get very bored of this 'cooking meals' all the time craic. Decide once this whole sorry affair is over and you're never going to look at a piece of broccoli again. While grilling chicken for the 11th time this week, become very tempted to eat it on the dangerous side of undercooked, remember the girl who got food poisoning 2 weeks before your Debs and arrived looking infuriatingly skinny. Wonder for the 25th time since you left school if she did it on purpose. Facebook stalk her. Notice she is now plump and also going out with creepy Darren who worked in Supermac's in TY. Feel better. 

Day #15: Confidence in the creation of your new beach physique starting to wane slightly as still no sign of life altering results. The only pounds you're loosing lately are on River Island bikinis in insane shapes and colours which you're buying for 'motivation'. Push thought to the back of your mind that you will not succeed in your diet and will look like a stick of pepporoni with miniature bits of cloth stuck to it. Bump into friend who makes the misfortunate move of asking you how your diet is going. Forget that she was there on the epic launch day (Day 3) and spiral immediately into vortex of self-destructive and paranoid thoughts, deducing that the only way this loathsome bitch would say such a thing is to drop hints about your imminent holiday and lack of weight gain, or as a underhanded sneer about the bikini you just purchased. Rush home and listen to Prince and try to dance away the fear. Decide cannot try on newly purchased bikini out of sheer terror and try to supress thoughts of ''itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polkadot bikini'' type situation on the beach when you finally put it on.

Day #17: Going holiday shopping. Slightly panicking. Aware girls are all expecting new skinny you to be unveiled in Mallorca. Wonder how convincing it would be to tell them all you've changed religion and simply cannot be seen without your Berka for the duration of the holiday. Only feel confident to try on sunglasses. 

Day #19: Desperately start spending a lot more time with the dog in the vain attempt to catch ringworm after reading crazy french women used to eat them to loose weight. Decide to consult pictures of celebrities on holiday for inspiration. Flick through a copy of 'Heat' in sheer horror. Decide will never download a Saturdays song ever again for the rest of your days. 

Day #20: Panic as you now have 5 days until holiday. Stress about being the token unattractive girl in the group and try to develop some sort of dazzling personality to make up for your appearance. Panic panic panic panic for the rest of the day.

Day #21: Acceptance. Yet another diet has failed.

Day #21: (later) Start the Special K diet and buy a wrap. 

The Saucy Cow

xxx

The War Of The Buttons

'And then we broke up.'

--------------------

I like being the centre of attention, alright. I'm woman enough to admit it. And when there's trauma in my life, I sometimes like to imagine the worst. Like, yesterday say, when the elevator halted itself a wee bit. Who are you to judge me if for that split moment, I imagined myself several hours later being dragged from the smoke filled elevator by Fireman Hunk, somehow covered in blood and to rapturous applause from the surrounding crowd of spectators and the assembled media? Yes, I like to milk my moments of drama. So as selfish as it sounds, I was quite relishing the melodramatic silence that followed my SHOCKING statement when Bee, my flatmate said:

'Soooo......have you changed your relationship status yet?'

Had I changed my relationship status yet? The more sensible among you might argue I changed my relationship status when I broke up with him. The rest of you are quivering as you realise I had yet to inform Facebook, a social institution even George Orwell would have struggled to imagine. I gulped hard. Everyone's eyes were on me now.

'I..uh...I?' I could feel Bee's laptop blinking at me pointedly.
'Is it not a bit too soon?'
'Babes, it's been like ten minutes' Marcy replied, without a trace of irony.
(Marcy and Bee are the kind of girls who say 'babes' and get away with it. I try to do it too, but every time I say 'babe' a voice in my head goes '....PIG IN THE CITY!!!')
'And, you need to let everyone know it was YOUR decision. You don't want people walking around thinking it was a mutual thing...'
Yes, perish the thought people should think we'd split amicably. To be honest though, I can be as cynical as I like here on my cosy retrospective perch but at the time I was hyperventilating from the scenarios which were quickly playing out in my head. I could envision everyone I'd ever met all being online simultaneously and watching my mini-drama play out on their newsfeeds as they tisked and said things like, 'well, she is ridiculously unattractive' and 'at least he's free from her now to pursue a relationship with that model who's been relentlessly poking him'. My eyes shot around Bee's bedroom for guidance from my assembled friends.
'DO IT SAUCY!'
I launched myself towards the laptop. I don't know if you've ever tried to do something in a hurry, but if you do in the future, I do not recommend a swivel chair as your seating of choice. I hold the inelegant shuffling on that blundering chair and some very hectic typing responsible for the valuable time wasting which ensued. And there, when I logged in, it was. He'd beaten me. That ominous little heart beside a changed relationship status at the tippity top of my screen, as if to say, ''THIS JUST IN: CONFIRMATION THAT SAUCY WILL, IN FACT, AS WIDELY SPECULATED, BE ALONE FOR LIFE''.
I swivelled (unsmoothly) back to the girls in horrified despair. They all managed to wipe the alarm off their faces just a second too late before assuring me that:
'It's fine! In fact, it's better this way. Now people will think that you're the mature and confident one who didn't immediately resort to telling the whole world over Facebook'
We were now going to pretend that clearly this was never the plan. As much as I liked to hang on to the idea of my ex-boyfriend sitting in the dark, face lit gravely by the screen, holding back his right arm as his finger hovered over the button to click 'single', barely able to see the keyboard through his tears, (before releasing pigeons to the vatican and a hand written letter to the Queen to confirm the split) I doubted very much that this was the case. As I looked back at the screen again, I had the foreboding feeling that my social network break-up was going to be a lot more stressful than my boring old real-life one.

My love of romantic comedies was not only responsible for my extremely destructive and unrealistic expectations of relationships, it also provided me with a benchmark for what break-ups should be like. I was then very upset with my newfound obsession with monitoring my facebook for post-relationship damage control, instead of doing other very important things; Like eating EVERYTHING. There was a bag of hula hoops lying seductively on the kitchen counter with my name on them. I knew this. Yet here I was quivering in front of a screen, and jumping every time I got a notification. Bit anti-climactic when I realised it wasn't the ex posting meaningful lyrics on my wall. Nor, I noticed, had he 'liked' any ambiguous links alluding to his inner turmoil. (E.g 'Smiling on the outside but wishing you were dead on the inside', or 'Knowin u will neva get ova dat 1 special person....') Eventually I shook off my conceited thoughts and tried to reassure myself that surely I would never go out with the kind of person who would do that kind of thing. Or that to the best of my knowledge, there did not exist on this earth a man who would be driven to such heartbreak over me. Unfortunately...
Bridget Jones-esque thoughts aside, what the christ had happened to me? I was obsessed with my kind of on-screen character. Why was it so crucial how I project myself in this fabricated society? Disgusted with myself, I leant back from the screen and digested fully the complete impact on my life this social media tool had taken. All the pictures I'd strategically tagged, all the statuses I had worded so carefully, all the people I despised but whose relentless drivel I trawled through day after day. And why? Seriously, why? And with that, before I could rethink what I was doing, I took a deep breath, and clicked ''Delete Account''.

LOL JK!!!!!!!

Yeah, as if. If you fell for that then regular reader you are not. My character doesn't have enough substance for such a bold statement. I'll only delete facebook when it's trendy to do it. (aka when everyone else does) Until then, back to Bee's room where I was in the middle of my 'I'maddictedtofacebook' epiphany. 

In walked Bee.

'So babes, have you deleted him yet?'

Deleted him? I hadn't even thought of that yet. Frantic, I checked his profile to see if that quick-witted bastard had beaten me to yet another punch. Slightly sedated, I realised I still had full access to his profile. Dare I delete him? In my head I could imagine him evaporating into a million cyber milli-pieces. 

'Better yet,' interjected Marcy, 'BLOCK him.'

For a moment I conjured up the image of me standing over my concussed ex, brick-on-a-string in my hand. Then I realised what she really meant. I bit my lip. If I'm honest, did I really want to sacrifice the one precious medium where I was guaranteed to be able to keep unrestricted tabs on him at all times? Alright, I realise at the proof reading stage that that last sentence sounds a little Glenn-Close-in-Fatal-Attraction. Anyone who can't admit to having the odd stalk of an ex on facebook, you're only kidding yourselves. Why not tamper with your weighing scales, and buy a treadmill as other additions to your farcical lifestyle? Hmm? Yeah, thought so.
Besides, he'd know I blocked him. Then what would he think? Well, I know what I would think. My self-obsessed reality proof cocoon would try to convince me that images of me having a whale of a time as a new glamourous singleton would have driven him so demented he'd have to purge them from his newsfeed and go drown himself romantically in a remote but picturesque lake. But is he as egocentic as I am???
'Oh Saucy,' I thought to myself with a proud smile, 'no-one is as egocentric as you are'
True, brain, true. But nonetheless, I wasn't taking that risk.

Anyway, if I can't see him, then he can't see me. Then how on earth, dear reader, am I supposed to subject him to my passive aggressive post-relationship propaganda? We had been broken up all of 32 minutes at this point and it had clearly, he'll be delighted to know, taken its toll on me. Frazzled and demented I was now re-examining my profile from the point of view of a stranger and meticulously editing my tagged pictures. I was like my own PR company. Every now and then I would click across one which was not to my taste and experience what I imagine cardiac arrest feels like. (''HOW DID THIS ONE SLIP THROUGH THE NET??! HOW??? HOW!? DAMN YOU AUNT IMELDA, YOU CALLOUS BITCH, AND YOUR 'FAMILY BBQ '08' PICTURES!!!!! DAMN YOU TO HELL!! *untag untag untag*'') I could imagine him sitting back on some bond villian type chair cackling madly as he zoomed in on the offending image and smugly made it his screensaver. I made a mental note to loose the best part of 2 stone before the weekend, buy something ridiculously fabulous which I would never wear, and make plans to go someplace chic and pretentious armed with around seven cameras and some seriously hardcore spanx. Must also download photoshop.
I was going above and beyond the call of crazy.
Manic, I reviewed my profile once more and scanned it for errors. Since the much-anguished "Saucy is now single <3" post, I had received 12 likes. Gushing, I checked them. 10 were from very close girlfriends. Fantastic. Unless I soon announced my transformation into a very much sought after lesbian, he is going to assume I text them all feverishly and made them like it. One was from an extremely random girl whom I haven't spoken to in years (such is facebook). Toyed with fantasy that she was in fact a lesbian and dangerously infatuated with me. I took a moment to prepare my ''alas, we cannot be....'' speech before noticing the final like was from a MAN. Yes, a male specie. Who had, as far as I knew, a fully functioning penis. Unfortunately for him, he liked it in a statement of solidarity as he is a lovely lovely friend. Now he was in the unfortunate position of either looking like my bitchy GBF or some kind of creep who had been long anticipating my return to the market. Sigh. As I was sulking about my lack of offers from suitors (it had been nearly 40 minutes now, people!) I noticed something else very, very wrong with my profile. Where was my little heart! That little heart which had caused me so much trouble in the first place had now vanished completely from my profile. Where is it??? Had I deleted it by mistake?  I double, triple and quadruple checked my settings. No. It seems you can post all the pictures you like of you vomiting onto your bosses lap at the christmas party, or as many statuses as you like about your disturbing obsession with your imaginary farm, but as soon as you announce 'Oh FACEBOOOOOOK! I'm singlleeeeee!', Facebook says: 'Hmm....we might just hide that little titbit of information, shall we?' I silently cursed Zuckerberg, the Big Brother I never wanted for enhancing my already festering Single Woman Syndrome. I sank into the chair, emotionally exhausted. I just broke up with someone, and I hadn't even been able to focus on it because I was spending so much time making sure it was subtly obvious that I just broke up with someone. I still had not eaten any chocolate, for Christs sake. Holy moley.
'You know what,' I thought, 'feck this.'
His profile was glaring straight at me, defiantly, I thought. It was time to do what I do best: self-indulgence.
'You know what Saucy!' I said to myself.
'What?' I replied, to myself.
'He is totally doing the same thing to your profile right now.'
'TOTALLY!' I thought.
And with that, I grabbed 'Love Actually' even though it could not be further from Christmas, a duvet, a bag of buttons and my least attractive pyjamas and clicked LOG OUT.

The Saucy Cow
xxx

Ah well....get well soon anyway, yeah?

'Jayyyyysus Saucy...'
'mrrmmph'
'Look at the state of ya....'
'mmeeeeep...'
'Like REALLY. REALLY. I knew you'd be in PAIN. But look at you. You are clearly in mind-bending, sense-of-reality-altering, absolutely crippling PAIN.'
'...MMMMRMMMPH!'
'No, don't try and answer. I know that no matter how much you'd like to participate in the conversation, you physically can't even muster a whisper. I'll just keep talking at you, but I'll end each sentence with a question and an expectant silence and you can just lie there, frustrated out of your brains. Alright?'
'....'
'I bet you're lying there now, just thinking, god, this isn't half as bad as tonsillitis used to be...'
'......'
'I bet you're just lying there thinking, jesus, was this worth it at all hmm! Like, I bet you're lying there just staring at the ceiling that you've been staring at for the past week, trying not to let too much saliva build up in your mouth because swallowing it is so excruciating and you're just WISHING for ten cases of tonsillitis over rather than continuing with this soul crushing agony?'
'........'
'Would you like some of this snack which is delicious and also your favourite?'
'..'
'OOPS! FORGOT. You can't eat anything bigger than a morsel. I better take care of that so...'
'.....'
' *munch munch munch* hm, for someone who's not eating, you're not really losing much weight, are ya?'
'....'
'WELL I BETTER GO! We've been doing loads of jam packed exciting and fun things lately. You're lucky really, that you can't participate. Sooooo exhausting having such a social life! But don't worry, you can read about them on Facebook later, yeah?'
'........'
'Oh, and Saucy, one more thing?'
'......?'
'Get well soon?'
'....$%£**%!*'

Get well soon? GET WELL SOON, YOU SAY? Well why didn't I think of that. Here I am lying in what would be a coma had it not been for the drugs they're relentlessly pumping into me, when all along I could have just ended it all by getting well, soon. Why didn't you say so! Thank you kind sir for your helpful request.

I was warned when I was getting my tonsils out that I was in for a very sore couple of weeks. Apparently, the older you get, the more traumatic the experience is. I had prepared myself after what the doctor had told me. What he hadn't told me, of course, was how I could expect to spend many of the early hours of the morning sprawled across the bathroom floor vomiting up blood in my own amateur production of Saw. Lying there resting my chin on the toilet seat so that most of the blood would fall neatly into the bowl, holding the door closed with my outstretched foot to lock out my hysterical mother, (''SAVE YOURSELF MAM! No human should witness this...'') praying that I wouldn't do an Elvis and die here. A copy of Twilight glared down at me menacingly. (Not mine, I swear...) Surely if vampires existed they would be here any moment. And if sharks walked the land I would be screwed. Or if there was a murder committed in the neighborhood and the police chased the culprit into our house and upstairs into my room and found me lying there in blood and the evidence was so damning they didn't bother with DNA tests....How would someone like me last in the big house??
I sulked staring at my gruesome lap. It's been a tough few days. My personal highlights include breaking out in hives from the medication and choking on a cornflake. The worst part about my disease though had been dealing with other people.
Like  the person above, I can't even respond with what I assure you are my usual hilarious comebacks and witty quips. Woe is me.

It's always nice to have people come visit you. I like to just bask in actual human contact as I have been self-diagnosed with a very real, very scary case of cabin fever which requires an awful lot of sympathy - which I'm not getting. I wikipediaed the symptoms and I fit every single one, ladies and gents:

Symptoms include restlessness, irritability, irrational frustration with everyday objects, forgetfulness, laughter, excessive sleeping, distrust of anyone they are with, and an urge to go outside even in the rain, snow or dark.


You can imagine the absolute craic fest these symptoms create, with my disease. Manic laughter at episodes of Keeping Up Appearances & conspiracy theories about the dog, as well as being restrained from running out to put out the bins are just some select highlights.
So almost all visitors are welcome with manic, open arms.
However, events like these always draw random and distant relatives. The kind who are never ones to miss an opportunity to sit awkwardly in your living from hours on end, drinking all your tea and eating the fancy biscuits and making no conversation at all.
Normally, the familiar sound of them at the door, (greeting all my siblings by the wrong name but getting the dog's name right every single time) is my que to scramble up to my room and pretend I'm not there. But in my disabled condition I'm trapped, frantic and scared, on the couch in the living room. I'm forced to remain there for the duration - hours upon hours - of the visit.
This means I'm victim to my uncle's ha-ha-haaaaaLARious jokes.

Uncle: Well, you won't be kissing any boys now! Heh heh heh heh heh
Aunt: OH MARTY! Leave the poor girl alone! aHOO HOO HOO HOO
Mam: :D
Dad: :D
Aunt: :D
Uncle: :D
Dad: :D
Mam: :D?
Aunt: :D!
All: :D :D :D :D :D!!!!
Me: *must. shoot. venom. from. eyes*

Wrong on so many levels my dear relative. First of all, I've been left so bitter and inhuman by this treacherous disease that I couldn't scrape up enough warmth in my black heart to show any one any kind of affection to save Christmas. Kissing is certainly out of the question. Unless of course having your tonsils out was contagious. Then I could most certainly see myself raging through my local nightclub still in my hospital gown and attached to my drip going from person to person, snogging the face off them and leaving them on their knees in agony; screaming ''FEEL MY WRATH! FEEL MY WRATH!'' eventually managing to garner the empathy I deserve from everyone. But that's not that case.
Second of all, my lying here in my own sweat and dribble with my eyes rolling back in my head and as pale as cocaine like some kind of Snow Shite is never going to attract any young suitor to come in and smooch me. Unless they are a lot of young hunks with a fetish for girls who spend most of their time gargling their own blood and debating weather the shame of peeing themselves is worth the painful walk to the loo, in which case line them up.
Third of all, my parents and relatives talking about my love life still makes me blush and go 'Maaaaaam!!! You're SO embarrassing like'. This is never cool and I don't need these when I'm lying here on my potential death bed. (HEY! 1 in every 2,000 people who gets a tonsillectomy may need a blood transfusion! I'm so not exaggerating.)
Appropriate response: 'Haha! Yep well, apparently I can deep throat now sooo......'' That'll show them.

The Saucy Cow
xxx

Awwwwkward....

I'm getting pretty pissed with human beings right now. Pretty damn pissed. Once again, society has screwed me over.
Get out your teeny tiny violins, because it's time for a sob story.
I can finally say, that at the wise old age of twenty, I have managed to adjust socially. Despite the minor hiccup every now and then, I am now 100% able to converse with people, make friends, open a bank account etc. Leaving school let me shake my old nerdy persona and make myself COOL! Yeah, COOL. Fonzie cool. I drive a car. I go out and buy shoes, sometimes for no reason. If I wanted to, I could smoke a cigarette. If I bump into the postman, I can converse with him. Maybe share a joke or two, what of it? I have my own keys to the flat where I live now. And bar one waffle related incident, I haven't even set said flat on fire.
 And I struggle to pass as a functioning member of society, all to be told WHAT? Oh yes that's right. Apparantly, according to all these young sprouts with their twittering Tumblrs and their blogging facespaces, being awkward and nerdy and socially incompetent is actually really cool now. 

Are you freakin' kidding me? There is NOTHING attractive about being awkward. Awkward girls do not have 1,763,899 friends on their profile and are not capable of taking pictures of themselves and writing poignant shit over it in Verdana. That's not awkward.

Since my first experience of social interaction, I have been one tragic fumbling disaster.

 For first five years of my I'd been a solitary creature. All I needed were my doting parents to constantly assure me of my awesomeness and read me books enough times, until I'd learnt them off and could 'read' them to myself. In September '95 I was duped into attending school, with the promise that there would be many more books and also crayons. My first day proved to be nothing but disappointment. From the other children to my dirty double-crossing dad who LEFT after the first five minutes, letting me fend for myself. The only redeeming factor about this awful place was my teacher, the snuggly smiley Mrs McGrath. I knew just by looking at her, this woman was surely a mammy. I sat and coloured to myself for most of the day, avoiding the gormless dribbly stares of my classmates.

As I sat and tried to digest this new level of hell, a foreboding bell started to ring. Everyone else seemed to have been briefed on this bell and started to stand up and cheer.  Only 2 hours in school and I had already been socially conditioned to participate in the accepted protocol.
'Yaaay?' I called out, with my arms in the air.
My enthusiasm turned genuine when I saw that we were being led outside. YES! Maybe this hellish day was over, finally.
No. It seemed my living nightmare was about to get several degrees worse. People have argued for years on the Nature vs Nurture debate. The feeling of dread that I felt when I walked out of those school doors and saw those weird wooden things on the grass will always support my opinion that my hatred of sport was in my nature from day 1.

What the Christ was this? Other people, the boys especially were picking them up and swinging them around with reckless abandon. What's going to happen now? I sized up the rest of my class. Maybe we were going to engage in some sort of battle. I picked up my weapon, which was easily half my weight, and balanced myself ready for the inevitable fight to the death.
 I was just thinking of some fight tactics, when an earth shattering boom interrupted my thoughts. I turned around, petrified, to see the source. It was laughter, which was coming from a person who at that time, was the scariest man I had ever seen in my life.
He was a massive man, with the body of a snowman squished into a matching blue tracksuit set. He had wild white hair sticking out at crazy angles from his scalp, the colour contrasting with his bulbous blood red face. To me at the time, he looked like he had Bosco's face and hair, but with the colour reversed.  He walked around ominously singing old Irish folk tunes, punctuating each line with a booming laugh that went 'AHOO HOO HOOOO'  for no reason. To me, he was the anti-Santy.
And he was to be my P.E teacher for the next 6 years, after which he would be replaced under mysterious circumstances by an even scarier woman who was seemingly made of stone. (I didn't have a word for this woman at the time, until years later when I learnt what an 'angry lesbian' was.)
His massive porous blackhead dotted nostrils flared and he turned to me with a bloodcurdling smile. He must have smelt my fear, or heard my cotton socked knees knocking together in terror. He started to stumble towards me. In my world, no creature ever walked like that without being accompanied by the words ''FEE! FI! FO! FUM!''. I was scared to death. If you could imagine what it would be like for a small child to be approached by a snarling laughing Father Jack Hackett in a plastic blue outfit, you'd be bang on the money.
He started to lean down towards me, agonisingly slowly.
Oh my god. Oh my god!
'Helloooo dere, little gurl' he breathed on my face.
My eyes started to water from the smell of what I recognised as that weird stuff that Mammy and Daddy drank at Christmas time.
'Are you goin' ta play a bit of hurlin' for me, ya are?'
I nodded my head as fast and as eagerly as I could. I had no idea what hurling was, but sweet Jesus if this monster wanted me to play it, I was going to play it.
'GOOD GURL YOURSELF!' he boomed and walked away laughing, menacingly. I looked to Mrs McGrath helplessly but she just beamed at me innocuously.
You must understand that this was at a time in Ireland when Garda vetting wasn't seen as necessary for anyone working with children. Mr Monster used old school military style 'warm ups' and humiliation as motivation. He also had no awareness of the physical capacity of five year olds. Often our P.E lessons would end with tots lying scattered across the school field, gasping and twitching from the sheer physical exertion, and he would stand over us in disgust, baffled at how he ended up with such a class of 'lazy bastards'.
'I'll make All Shtar's of ye yet!' 
His memory often left a lot to be desired as well, and he was famed for calling children the names of siblings who had left the school years earlier, or relatives who had since died.
The best thing about Mr Monster though, was that a lot of his lessons were spent doing nothing as he chatted with Mrs McGrath about the weather.
On this day, this was the case. As it happened, it was a particularly gorgeous September day with the sun still baking down after a scorching summer. I saw that a group of girls in my class were huddled together chatting, and I decided to go and attempt to socalise. They took one look at me and decided, (probably because of curiousity) to let me join the group. Yes. I had infiltrated their clique. Now time to make millions of friends.
I had never had a friend before, other than my dog and my mother. I thought I had lived in a world where everyone would love me unconditionally. I'd have to try harder with these girls.
'Woooow' chirped the ring leader. 'It's soooo warm today'
All the other girls chorused agreement. I knew my que.
I stood with my hands on my hips and nodded wisely at the sun. It was indeed, warm. They looked at me in approval. We all understood what was going on here.
Another girl decided to step it up a notch.
'YEAH. I'm going to take off my jumper.' And with that she did. She followed it up by tying it around her waist, which was the coolest freakin' trick I had ever seen! How did she do that?! This girl was obviously some kind of warlock. I made a mental note with myself that she would be my best friend. Luckily for me, everyone else was as awestruck by this mind bending alteration of a jumper, so after some step by step instructions, we all managed to tie our school  jumpers around our little waists. I stood there proud as punch with the ugly maroon cotton monstrosity hanging from my waist. I should have stopped there.
I should have known when I'd gone far enough. How different would my life had been if I'd just stopped there? No, I needed more. I was turning into a socialite, I fended on approval from my peers. I needed more and more. I got too selfish.
My next move would prove socially fatal. We were all now standing in our uniforms, minus our jumpers. This consisted of a grey cotton blouse, a grey skirt, a maroon tie and finally, a grey vest which buttoned at each shoulder.
The ring-leader decided she was going to push things one step further, in this disturbing strip tease game, where she who dared to bare the most won.
'YEAH. It's really REALLY really hot.''
And with that we all watched in amazement as she unbuttoned her grey vest at the shoulder and took it off, leaving her in her shirt, skirt, and tie, with the jumper still around her waist, of course. We were stunned by her level of ingenuity and one by one imitated her. I was so excited. Is this what friends did?! If I'd known the trauma games like this would bring me in ten years time with stolen bottles of vodka and puberty inspired games of dares, I would be far less excited. But all I was focusing on now was how I was after making friends! This school thing might not be so bad after all....
I unbuttoned the button on the shoulder on my left. I turned back to the group of girls, who all had their eyes on me, and with a triumphant flourish, unbuttoned the button on my right shoulder. TA DA!!!

Unfortunately, in my excitement I neglected to notice that my uniform wasn't actually as nice as the rest of the girls. My uniform was bulkier, more ill fitting. And my pinafore, was a one piece.
That's right, dear reader.
With the added weight of that stupid jumper around my waist, my one piece pinafore dropped to the floor with a dramatic whoosh, leaving me standing there in my shirt, tie and cartoon pink Cinderella knickers. Unaware of my exposed self, I confidently put one hand on my hip and theatrically wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.
'Pheeeeeew! It is hot.'
The girls were all staring back at  me with their jaws dropped. Obviously this was a level of avant garde expression that the world just wasn't ready for yet. I was the Lady Gaga of my time.
Silence fell across the playing field and I turned to see all the other girls in my class staring at me in horror, and all the boys scratching their heads and staring at my, ah, area, absolutely baffled. I looked down to see what all the fuss was about, and my jaw dropped myself. What?! Why had my skirt fallen down, and the other's hadn't? I looked back at my stunned classmates for explanation, just in time for the awkward silence to be broken by a hearty spluttering.
Mr Monster had dropped to his knees and was gasping and bellowing with laughter, his usual scarlet visage turning purple. I pouted. Despite my limited experience in the real world I knew what it felt like to be laughed at, and I knew it wasn't nice. My eyes watered and I turned to Mrs McGrath for that famous smile. To my despair she was furious.
'SAUCY. Come here and put your skirt back on!!!' and with that she caught my hand and strutted back into the classroom, I, trailing behind her. Tripping pathetically over my own skirt which was wrapping itself around my ankles.

That was Day #1 of school, readers. It's a hard nick-name to shake, you know, 'knickers-face'. And my life being the bad sitcom script that it is, all I did was reinforce the public image I had as NERDY MCNERD NERD over the coming years. The tragedy.
And that, going back to my original point, is why 'cool nerds' annoy me.

The Saucy Cow
xxx

What can I say, he fell for me.

'HAAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!'

'.....but I just thought that...'

'BAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!'

'I HONESTLY thought that if I....'

'HAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!'

I pursed my lips, folded my arms and just stared. One of my closest friends, my best friends, was suffering. Actually suffering because she was laughing so hard at me. Can't say at this moment in time that she was going to garner much sympathy from me.

'Saucy....' she gasped, wiping the stream of tears from her face '....Saucy...ha ha ha...sorry it's just...you, YOU should NEVER try to be sexy...' and with that another eruption of laughter exploded from her mouth. She didn't even bother trying to suppress this one and I watched her collapse under waves of giggles until the point where she was laughing so hard, no sound was coming out and she was just a vibrating heap of malicious delight.

I tried to slap a look of outrage and hurt on my face. ('Me?! Unsexy?!') But I quickly realised I was not fooling anyone. I had just unwittingly regaled my friend while asking her for some advice on a boy problem. I was trying to figure out what to text him back next after he'd got quite flirty in some messages. She asked to see what I'd text back so far, and it was at that point she started laughing. Obviously my attempts to come across as a coquettish seductress had been the funniest thing she'd seen all day. I patiently waited for her to finish.

The truth is, when it comes to the opposite sex, I am like the female version of The Inbetweeners. I'm not saying this in a, 'ooh aren't I like a little Bridget Jones with my hilarious anecdotes' kind of way. In an actual 'thank god for artificial insemination' kind of way. As soon as romance is involved my brain goes above and beyond the call of duty to make itself as useless as possible. Unbelievable right? I can understand how some of you may be incredulous. 'YOU Saucy?! A smooth talking, quick witted little charmer like yourself?! It's completely implausible to think you wouldn't be anything short of a modern day Jessica Rabbit with men.'

No one who knows me well is thinking this.

 I have a list of examples as long as a dole queue myself up here. Most of them however, are literally unpublishable. Even the most black hearted of you would struggle to read them, that mortifying. Unfortunately, no exaggeration. However, there is one story which all my friends like to use as a point of reference every time I shoot myself in the foot romantically....

*****

Last summer, I had just leaped with exuberance into single life after a very long relationship. After being blatantly lied to and deceived by the rom-com industry, I was very excited to test out the power of awkward and traditionally unattractive females in getting a man. I would emulate at least one of the story lines from Love, Actually if it killed me, goddammit. I have to add though, if my love life at this point in time had been made into a romantic comedy, it would kick arse in the box office, being the most entertaining tragedy since Titanic. The ending would be a bit of an anti-climax though, with me lying alone in my flat, crying and listening to 'Lonely This Christmas' and drinking nail polish remover just to get some more alcohol into my system to stop the hurt. But I digress. Sadly, my motion feature would also feature a montage of me giving myself 'a sexy new makeoveeeer!'. Yes, that's right. To kick off my single life I decided what I needed to do was REINVENT myself. (Sound familiar? Yeah we all know what happened last time I decided to do that.) After trying on things 'that I would have never worn before' (with very good reason) and putting on 'trendy' make up and 'different' hair I was now ready to hit the town, looking like Peggy Mitchell 2.0. To my dismay, sitting in the bar I was not fighting for space from all my adoring suitors as I had predicted. Word must not have spread that I was back on the market yet.

As I saw it, I had two options now. I could either sit patiently and try and meet someone nice and form a steady new stable relationship from that point onwards. Or! I could get reallly really drunk and go down the Kate Moss road and HOPE FOR THE BEST! I could clearly see which one was the right option.

As I downed my fourth jagerbomb, my hazy eyes locked on my first victim. 'Hee, I'm going to kiss you later!' I wittily thought to myself and started to giggle. He caught me and gave a very questionable, very drunk smile back. I stopped DEAD. I knew what was going to happen next. Apparently my common sense knew EXACTLY what was going to happen next and fecked off for itself. So nonsensical drunken giddiness took the reins and started feeding ridiculous notions into my mind.

'SO!' I thought as I smiled creepily back at the boy, for way too long 'So this is what it's like to be irresistible.'

Even if one of my friends had been practical enough to try and send me home at this point, no one, bar NO ONE could stop me from 'seducing' this lucky, lucky boy. Me and the boy exchanged a few looks, described by me as 'sultry'. Probably described by him as 'awkward at best'. With the benefit of hindsight I now understand that most of his returned glimpses were because I was giving off the impression that I was squinting at him in a 'do I know you...?' kinda way. This was what happened when I tried to do my really sexy eyes-half-closed smoldering peeks. My 'flirting' continued throughout the night. I even managed to obtain his name. We'll call him Harold, because despite my best wishes I have never met a Harold. I won't bore you with the details of my calculated and clever efforts to make Harold mine. I'm sure at this point you're more than capable of imagining how it went.

At the end of the night, when he was at his weakest I locked eyes on Harold in the smoking room, sitting by a table. I sauntered over in a fashion that could best be described as a waddle. I was about four feet away when ABSOLUTE SHIT-THE-BED CRAZY PANIC kicked in. Even my inebriated mind could comprehend the problem I was now facing.

'What am I doing?! I don't know how to TALK to a boy, from scratch! I haven't been single in years. Oh Jesus. He's seen me now. I have to commit. If I walk away I'll look mental...' (Not as mental as I ended up looking, mind.)

I was just going to have to fake it till I made it. I would consciously try to appear as single as possible and fool him into thinking I was a flirting marvel. Think think think Saucy, you have lots of single friends, what would they do?

And so with that, I walked over to where he was sitting and with much kicking of legs and awkward grunts, I lay myself across the table. Yeah, as if to say 'where dya want me, baby?' Now, what possessed me to think that this was the done thing in the single world, I will never know. When had I ever walked into a nightclub and seen bodies strewn left right and centre across tables and couches? Never. Neither had he obviously, from his surprise, which I chose to misinterpret as arousal.

After engaging in conversation (Herculean task, might I add) I finally clocked that the awkward silence which I had misconstrued for romantic reflection, was actually that awful 'we're going to kiss in a second but first let's prolong it for another few awkward moments of staring at each other' thing. With my Mission: Single at the forefront of my mind, I began to panic. There would be NOTHING unpredictable about this situation. Even my own drunken narrative could recognise that me falling off the table trying to smooch him (likely) wouldn't be at all surprising. After some quick thinking, and hearty motivation from seeing the distance between the table and the concrete floor, I surprised even myself by suggesting we 'go outside.' 

Harold looked confused.

‘Brilliant. My sexiness has him dumbfounded!’

Harold led me by the hand through the crowded nightclub, which seemed to be extra full that night of people we both knew. Not one to miss an opportunity to mortify myself, I decided that this was the opportune moment to ask every single person I passed for some chewing gum. No time for subtlety! Having minty fresh breath for Harold was paramount.

Led by Harold’s hand, I was pulled stumbling outside the nightclub.

Oh.

From the confines of the sweaty smoking room walls, ‘outside’ had appeared much more exotic and romantic. The only thing exotic about this situation, I could now see, was the way the cold sea breeze smacking me at the left side of my face was contrasting the stench of salt and vinegar from the chip van on the right.

Harold looked at me for guidance.

Obviously I was being the passionate stronghold in this relationship.

‘Let’s…go over here’ I whispered in my sultriest husk.

‘WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THE WIND?’

‘I SAID…’

‘YOU HAVE A SHED?!’

‘NO.’

‘YOU WANNA GO?’

For fuck’s sake. This never happened in Casablanca. After some awkward hand gestures and nodding towards the desired location, I pulled Harold into what I had assumed was an alley. Actually, it was someone’s garden. I quashed my sudden paranoia about trespassing laws and tried to reassure myself that there was no place in romance for law and order.

I don’t know if any of you have ever tried to make conversation with someone while standing in a complete stranger’s garden in the dead of night, but you can imagine chat between us wasn’t blossoming. After going to extreme lengths to avoid it, there was literally nothing left to do but kiss Harold. Do not judge me.

I soon realised that trying to be sexy was as exhausting as maintaining a drug habit. I thought achieving what I thought was a fairly unusual first kiss would settle me, but no. I wanted bigger and better hits. Soon I started to panic again that this was getting too boring. A lesser woman would have sacrificed her morals and gone home with him. Not me. And that’s because I have morals ladies and gentlemen, and NOT because I was wearing spanx that night.

Being out of touch with single reality for so long, I started to wonder if not going home with him would make me look like a 1950’s housewife. Do single people all go home with each other these days? Is he going to think I’m some sort of freak that he must court for several years before he finally gets his hands on my drawers or my dowry? There was nothing for it. I had to make this THE BEST KISS EVER.

I’m a modest girl. I had not done a FÁS course in shifting. I had to think outside the box. As with every aspect of my romantic life, I immediately went to the back catalogue of romantic comedies in my head for inspiration. What would make this really cinematic and memorable? Think laterally. Laterally…. I’m in a garden… that’s it. Suddenly I recalled a sequence of characters falling onto a pruned English lawn in romantic embrace, from Bridget Jones’ Diary to Notting Hill. That’s it. I’ll carelessly toss him onto the lawn and tumble after him. Oh Harold, you are going to love this!

And so, as craftily as I could I rose one heeled foot. I arched it around the back of Harold’s leg, estimating where the back of his knee was. In one swift motion I planted my foot straight into the back of his knee, knocking him off balance. In all my meticulous foot positioning, I neglected the most basic physical aspects of the situation. Harold and I were still kissing. His arms were around my waist so I was his next port of call for balance. He leant on top of me instinctively, his weight over powering me. Bear in mind I was still on one foot and in heels like some obstinate experimental dodo bird. I never stood a chance. As my remaining foot started to slip I noticed the texture of the lawn beneath me was kind of unusual. Harold was leaning on top of me now and the two of us were now joint together, and tumbling comically slowly towards the ground. Just before I hit earth, something caught sight in my vision which was adjusting to the dark ground flying rapidly towards me. That didn’t look like grass….

KRRRRRCCSSSSHHHHHHHH!

…The unmistakable sound from my childhood of skin skidding across razor sharp gravel. I had stumbled off the grass, and onto the thousands of pointed stones littering the ground. I lay with each of them digging into my back, groaning. I looked to my right. Lit dramatically by my phone which had tumbled out of my bag, I could see Harold’s bleeding face, nose down in the stones. He had intuitively rolled sideways after I impacted the ground, essentially tearing off half his face.

He lifted his face from the earth, spitting out stones, some falling from the pools of blood quickly pouring from his cheeks.

‘Are you alright, Saucy?’

‘Oh shit.’

He misread my shock at the state of his face for injury and helped me up.  

‘Whoa, what happened? We must both be pretty drunk eh!’

‘Haaahaa yeah…..drunk’

I hoped against hope that Harold had no mirrors in his house.

Sometimes when I see Harold around, still with little scratches on his face I wonder will he ever understand that he was but another tragic victim of me, trying to be sexy.

The Saucy Cow

xxx

How To Get Unfriended By A Guy In Ten Days

Facebook. Suits me down to the ground usually. Communicating with people without having to conform to the social norms of speaking to their face? YES PLEASE.
However, like all good things in my life (Jersey Shore, potato salad & alcohol) it is not without its fundamental flaws.
After the initial buzz of setting up my profile I went on a rampage of accepting friend requests willy nilly. And now I find myself in a vortex of online etiquette. I don't want to be FRIENDS with these eejits anymore. But deleting people off Facebook these days is like the equivalent of setting their dog on fire. What's a girl to do?

Why, take the completely cowardly route of course, and be the most annoying Facebook friend there ever was until all the excess friends delete me and I'm left with only my true amigos.
And here's how I plan on doing it:

The Saucy Cow's Guide to Being the Worst Facebook Friend There Ever Was

1. In a relationship? EXCELLENT. You are now equipped with the necessary ammunition to make everyone want to instantly delete you. Don't worry about the validity or significance of your relationship, that's irrelevant. The most important thing to you now is to ensure that EVERYONE is acutely aware of not only the fact that you're together, but also every morsel of your sex and private life. 

Why bother phoning, texting, or god forbid spending physical time with one another when you can share trivial exchanges over everyones newsfeed? Why not enrich your friends with H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S tête-à-tête between the two of you where you both make fun of each other for seemingly hours on end. Not only is this not one bit funny, it's extremely irritating on the grounds that it makes the two of you seem like you're different  to other couples, because you have the amazing capacity to make fun of each other. HOW QUIRKY ARE YOU! Don't forget the over-use of nicknames. Using normal birth names isn't going to annoy anyone. Some classics include referring to each other as ''the boyf/girlf'', ''the wifey'', ''the babe'' etc.The best nicknames however, are the ones which are thinly veiled references to the both of your antics in the bedroom. Anything that forces the mental image of you two having sex into the unsuspecting minds of your friends is a surefire success in the quest to get deleted. To best ensure everyone knows exactly who you're referring to, (your boyf, that is) why not take some disturbing pictures of the two of you getting off with one another and post them under the disconcerting caption of 'awww :)'. For maximum mental scarring, why not have a willing friend take them, so that you can use both arms? Don't forget plenty of smilies, x's and mega vomit-inducing hearts. For best results, just post one, solitary pointless heart to each other every few hours.

2. Not in a relationship? Don't worry. There are many singletons out there who manage to be just as infuriating as self obsessed couples. Use Facebook as your own person Match.com. Firstly, advertise yourself. Go into the bathroom in your underwear and take loads of pictures of yourself. Act like having a camera in the bathroom at all times is totally normal and not creepy at all. Photoshop the shit out of them until you look like your own very distant attractive cousin. Then post all over Facebook and complain about how you look. The key with these is quantity, not quality so make sure you have dozens of almost identical pictures. There are a lot of these on FB at the moment so try and mix it up. Pose with the family pet or your gran, while in a bikini. Now, make them your profile picture and comment on the profiles of lots and lots of men who already have girlfriends/wifes. If confronted by the respective other halves, simply advise them not to hate you cos they aint you.  

3. As Shakespeare said, 'all the world is a stage.' This includes Facebook, so DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA. Try generic whinging statuses, like 'Life is so tough 2day' 'Jst wish I cud turn bac d clock :'(' 'Y is it dat u dnt realise what u got till its gone?'. For inspiration, reference a Westlife songbook. When someone expresses concern just reply with a :( to really aggravate everyone. 

4. Join every group on facebook.

5. Post virals 5 months too late on your wall with the comment LMFAOOO!!!

6. Update your whereabouts with a vigorousness that would rival MI5. This includes checking into the bedroom, the toilet, and most importantly, NANDOS.

7. Become a raging alcoholic so you're never short of material for your post night-out self glorifying status. Never underestimate the power of taking things out of context and referencing things at random. Eg 'What a nite!!!!...wild! 3 randomers showin up & a horse! spent d nite in a shed too lol'. This will make it seem like you had a wild time, who's to know you're talking about the nativity play you went to see your little sister in? Don't forget to post a status before you go out, during, and after. Each pre status must say ''things are gonna get messyy!!!!'' or something to that effect, each status during must include lots of spelling mistakes and each one after must mention how you will never consume alcohol again, UNTIL TONIGHT LOLZ. Over use punctuation.

8. Bring a camera absolutely everywhere and ensure that you only upload and tag the pictures where you look amazing and your friends look like the back of a horse's arse. Tag these at a time like 6am, when they will have the maximum time online before your mortified friends can hurriedly untag themselves. If they do this, make sure you make one your profile picture.

9. Keep participating in games where you use a fruit as your status to describe what a slut you are (The Saucy Cow...is a pineapple ;) ) under the ridiculous guise of it somehow generating funds for cancer research.

10. Like your own status. 

Bad hair phase

''FLOOOOOOBBBAAAADAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

''AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. AAAAAAAAAAAH.''

I dropped to my knees shaking in agony, various toiletries and hygiene products showering down on top of me. Holy sweet merciful christ almighty. In a miscalculated attempt to swish hair out of my face,  I had shaken my hair absent mindedly and with just my amazing luck, a strand of peroxide coated hair had flicked into my eye and been squished there by the delayed reaction of my eyelids shutting together. I used to think I knew what pain was but this was a completely new sensory experience. Desperately ripping off my little plastic gloves and crawling around on the floor blindly like a gasping goop coloured cockroach, I prayed and prayed to come into contact with a towel. Even crawling into door frames and toilets couldn't distract from my mission. I still believe that had I found a spoon there on the bathroom floor at that moment I would have scooped out my own eye...
2 minutes, (or in pain time: several eons) later I managed to climb up the sink, towel in hand, and hung there with my bare eye under the cold tap, whimpering. The searing pain didn't seem to bothered with subsiding and I started to have a life altering moment of thinking about all the things I would never see again, now that I had been blinded by a home hair dye kit. Uninspired, all I could think of was how I'd recorded last nights Skins and my now never get a chance to see it. Eventually my sight came back just as I began to panic about how I'd even find the remote control, and I after three excruciating blinks, I could peer at my reflection: Red faced and panting. One eye practically useless, bloodshot and swiveling around it's socket in a mad panic, the other one tearing up from my near blinding experience. As I straightened up, I watched the pus coloured goopy dye drip onto my shoulders after coming undone from the excitement. I was a sight for sore eye. The shiny black box laying on the floor, in all the aftermath caught my impaired sight. I squinted in fury at the blonde gorgeous model absolutely shit-a-brick happy beaming up at my from the hair dye box. That was how I was supposed to turn out. Sigh. Putting myself through all of this hardly seems worth it just for the sake of fixing a few pesky roots. But it's definitely better than putting myself through the trauma of going to the hairdressers.

I want my hairdresser to be my friend. I always have, and I always will. I always sit there lemon mouthed and smiling awkwardly every time I catch my stylists eye contact in the mirror. Meanwhile, in the chair next to me, another client seems to be having the funniest conversation there ever was with what appears to be their bff 4 eva + alwayz who is standing behind them holding the scissors. I try and I try and I try, but I've never met the right person. I did once have a brief relationship with a hairdresser. It did not end well. Since then I've been careful with my heart...y split ends.

 The year: 2005. My hair: brown. The boys in my town had really been testing my patience. I don't know if they'd been paying attention during any romcoms, like I had, but they had yet to realise that the bookish, unattractive brunette in the corner of the library was actually the girl of their dreams. I had to try another method before I could helpfully point it out to them that they were in love with me. Being me though, there was no happy middle. Learning how to use a comb or apply make up may have sufficed. I don't know if you all remember, but 15 year old boys are not exactly tricky to seduce. But no, as far as I was concerned, I had exhausted all avenues with the awkward nerdy girl attempt. With me, I was either one end of the spectrum, or the other. I was either radio waves, or gamma rays. I was never infrared. (My library phase featured a heavy interest in physics. The sexiest of the soul destroying sciences.)
  And lo, it was decided, I would REINVENT MYSELF. Being 15, I had only been 'myself' for about 4 days. Nevertheless, it was time to get a ridiculously cool haircut. This haircut, ladies and gents, was so ridiculously cool that it's 2011 now and it STILL hasn't come into fashion. I was that ahead of the game.

    I wanted a spikey punky little creation, with of course the obligatory pink streaks. I've seen the pictures, the only thing I can say is where was my mother when this idea went down. 

    And after going into my local salon one day for a trim, I found the man for the job. His name was Andy and we got on really well. I was over the moon. 'This was it!', I thought, 'my big chance.' 

   As I was paying for my trim, I proposed the idea to Andy. His face lit up like a stolen car in the corner of a field behind Dungarvan GAA pitch. At the time I saw his enthusiasm in a kind of creative 'I shall make you my masterpiece' kinda way. I see now all to clearly that it was obviously a ''SOMEONE HAS GIVEN THE MOST HYPERACTIVE CHILD IN THE PLAYGROUND A PAIR OF SCISSORS'' kinda way. I booked the appointment and strutted out of the hairdressers. Already I had the montage in my head of the day I would walk into school: renewed. I would be wearing sunglasses for no particular reason, and I would take them off in slow mo and shake my head and everyone would go ''oooh!''.

      I know what you're thinking. 'Oh Saucy! Another stupid mistake you've made in your life and have inadvertently used as blogging material. We can all clearly see at this point in the story that this haircut is going to end up looking horrific''. Sorry if I've spoiled the ending for any of you who were in extreme tension at this point, but yes obviously the haircut came out terrible. The shocker is that the actual haircut I chose isn't even the worst thing that happened me that day. Yeah, you're gonna keep reading now, aren't ya. 

     I arrived and nestled myself snug in the chair. I think I intentionally ignored the manic look in Andy's eyes as he eyed up a range of scissors and took his sweet time in selecting which one he was going to use to hack away at my locks. Cos me and Andy were so tight, we sat and chatted for a while about how we were going to do this. Together. He and I. I and he. 

     Andy explained to me that with the drastic change I wanted to do, he would have to do the job in three steps. (You would think the word ''drastic'' and the fact that I had to have a consultation and sign a permission slip before getting it done would have deterred me but no.) First he was going to cut my hair into a chunky Tetris blocky pyramid type shape. Then he was going to bleach where appropriate and apply the pink dye. Then he was going to snip away into my chunky lego layers and make me one funky chicken. Sound good?

 No. Of course it doesn't. It sounds like the stupidest haircut there ever was. But on with the narrative. Andy began to methodically cut into my hair so that it was in four very unattractive symmetrical blocky steps on either side of my face. If you can imagine, it looked for all the world like I was wearing a brown lego hat. But no matter. I stopped focusing on the haircut because OMG YOU GUYS, ANDY AND I WERE GETTING ON SO FREAKIN' WELL!

     I was beyond excited at this point. I couldn't wait for Andy and I to start having a really cosmo relationship and possibly creating our own secret high five, involving a finger click or three. We sat there exchanging hiiii-larious stories from our ker-azy lifes. Obviously he being a male hairdresser in a small Irish town (MAD!!!) and I being the kind of person who dyed my hair pink, we were both two kooky and off the wall for this one shaded horse town. If it weren't for the pure peroxide burning straight into my scalp, I wouldn't have known we were already on Phase 2: bleaching. Andy and I were having such a jovial time, we lost the run of ourselves. That peroxide was a little bit close to things like my ears and face. Andy was listening so intently to the interesting things that I was saying that he was smiling and nodding at me in the mirror, stroking the peroxide loaded brush over the same part of hair over and over again. Yeah, it was careless hairdressing, AND WHAT OF IT? We were having a whale of a time. Bonding. It got to the stage where even when we were silent I'd look up from my copy of OK! from 1999 and he'd look up from...my hair, and our eyes would meet in the mirror. Usually, this is moment is so painfully awkward with any other hairdresser I'd choke myself with the nearest GHD cord. With Andy, we could just smile at each other and go back to what we were doing. We were like that. 

   And then it happened. I was nattering away about whatever laborious incident was overshadowing my stressful 15 year old life, and Andy flicked back his wrist in a gesture of sympathy to my tale of woe. So lost in my anecdote was he, that he momentarily forgot he was holding an extremely dangerous bottle of 100% pure peroxide in that hand, and it slipped from his grip. 

     What are the odds, would you think, dear reader, of that bottle falling from Andy's grip and his arm being the perfect distance from the floor at that point & the peroxide bottle being at the perfect weight that it would allow the bottle to spin so many times on it's descent to the floor that it would land at a precise angle. An angle so precise, say, that it striking the floor at such a force would cause an ejection of peroxide from the tip of the bottle and it would go directly (because it was at this perfect angle) into Andy's eye? If you were a betting man, how much money would you put on that ACTUALLY happening? Before you answer, pause, and think who's blog are you reading. Yeah, now reassess: What are the odds of this happening to me?

That's right. Extremely likely. 

Back to the innocuous 15 year old me sitting in the salon chair. All I saw was Andy drop something and then seemingly try to really enthusiastically pick it up on the floor by collapsing onto the ground after it, disappearing from view completely. I sat there for a few awkward seconds blinking at my reflection thinking, 'Oh Andy, you clown! Probably trying to initiate a really hilarious game of peek-a-boo in a minute by staying on the ground so long.' I was then more than a little irked when some of the salon staff came running over, ruining the game entirely.

'Andy, ANDY? Are you ok?'

I best turn around and see whats happening.

Andy was lying on the floor shaking in a way I had only seen performed by an upside down crab at the beach once. His mouth kept opening and closing until eventually what was (I'm sorry Andy) a very feminine scream came out. Everyone was very confused. No one more than me. 

What was this, Andy? Was it one of our private jokes which we'd talked about during Phase 1? If it was, I'm sorry but the reference was not very clear at all. Maybe it was some sort of installation art piece. If so I was going to like Andy very much indeed. He was quite clearly the coolest person ever. 

Eventually Andy managed to tear his hands away from his inflamed face and point at the bottle of peroxide lying beside him. It quickly transpired to everyone what had happened. Everyone except me of course. 

It wasn't until I was standing outside the salon with the rest of the staff (and even some other curious clients,) wearing scraps of tinfoil in my hair and my black cape looking like the worlds shittest supervillian, as they loaded up the ambulance, that they explained the situation to me. 

Andy had in fact managed to squirt pure peroxide into his left eye and was now being rushed to hospital in an attempt to save his eyesight. This Andy was the same man whom I'd sat and listened to for 40 minutes as he discussed how hairdressing was his only calling in life. How his life would be so mind-numbingly soul destroyingly void and meaningless if he didn't wake up to a scissors and comb every day. And I had potentially taken this away from him. I had visions of Andy in a dark room wearing two dramatic eye patches and sobbing aloud, now that he can't cry anymore, blowing a hairdryer into his own face just to FEEL like a stylist again. 

       This scenario is bad enough as is, you're probably forgetting that at this point me and Andy are BFF's so I was extra upset. Also I was 15 and a clusterfuck of emotions at the best of times, so I may have had a little lip wibble. Hairdressers being hairdressers they flocked around me and herded me into the salon with lots of ''ooh''s and ''aah''s and tongue clicking and ''aw hun!''. 

     A cup of tea later and to be honest I was sure Andy was going to be right as rain. One of the hairdressers, or Miss Lovelies as I called them from that point on, then brought my attention back to the other pressing matter at hand.

'Now Saucy, how are we going to sort your hair...'

'Oh yes well I guess you can just pick up there where Andy left off with the peroxide there...'

I caught the look on Miss Lovely #1's face as she let her eyes dart to the offending bottle of chemicals, a few feet away still lying at the scene of the crime. It was obvious she was going nowhere near THAT. She then composed herself

'Well um, Saucy, the thing is....before Andy was taken off in the ambulance...'

My face winced at the reminder of what I had already told myself would definitely be a repressed memory from now on

'...WHERE I'M SURE HE'LL BE FINE!!! Well, he said that am, he didn't want any of us to finish your hair...'

Very funny Andy! 

The look on my face must have said it all.

'Well the thing is...it's such a big job and he was going to be so proud of it, he uh, wanted to finish it himself. When he gets out of A&E...'

I frowned. That's disappointing at best. I had a disco tonight and my reinvention was going to be put off. There was something niggling at me though, something I was forgetting....

The lovelies flocked around me and took me to the sink where they washed out all of the demon peroxide and sat me back in the chair for a blow dry. Well, at the very least my hair was going to be nice and glossy and straight for the night.

The penny didn't drop until the lovelies had completely finished drying my hair.

Lego hair.

ANDY NEVER GOT TO PHASE THREE. He didn't even get to the middle of phase two. I looked like the Sphinx. 

Half a haircut. I left the hairdressers with half a haircut. Certainly the worst half. And on the eve of a teenage disco. I was a Jacqueline Wilson novel waiting to happen. For the evening I sat with tears flooding down my face and 10,000,000 hairclips by my side trying to clip back the clumps of brillo pads which were my tresses. I would pull at strands and attempt to force them into a clip before realizing they had been cut unexpectedly and then screaming 'THERE'S NOTHING TO CLIP! I HAVE NO HAIR! I HAVE NO HAAAAAAIR!'

And that was the last time I tried to be friends with my hair dresser.

And so staring back in the mirror at my present day self, I kind of felt bad for Andy. If homedye hurts when you get it in your eye, I can only imagine what industrial strength chemicals were like. Also because I can see now that Andy had hoped I would be his little protegé. I don't have to describe to you how bad that haircut turned out when Andy was finally allowed to take off his eyepatch. And so with a deep breath and gritted teeth, I pulled back on my little plastic gloves and set to work on those damn roots. Yes I am trusting my hair with the biggest idiot I know, but no matter how much I fuck it up it will never be as bad as that particular 'do was....*shudder* .

The Saucy Cow

xxx