A desk of one's own

In a modern city-based life, a whole ‘room of her own’ is a lot to ask for so I’ve settled for a desk of my own: renting space in an office for the first time. After years of working at home I’ve finally conceded that spending $150 a week to work somewhere else with other people is actually worth it. There’s something about the presence of other people that makes we work harder - even if it is an office of earnest young men who are passionate about ‘Brand’. 

There’s less time to meander through dubious website, shuffle paper, do the washing up and by and large avoid doing actual work. In the one week I’ve been in this space I’ve managed to finish the plot outline and first chapter of Little Green Pills, not to mention a powerpoint presentation on the Product Disclosure Statement as Marketing Document, an ad for a range of nasal sprays, concepts for yet another investment fund and headlines for a new savings account - rivetting.

In the meantime: reality overload

I have to admit to watching a vast amount of reality shows. Not your Big Brother or your various Idols but the vast array of US programs mainly to be found on the Bravo channel. Any creative profession can be turned into a competition: clothes design, interior design, cooking, hairdressing. Perhaps we could have a writing reality show. Every week a group of writers produces a short story to suit a given audience or topic, each getting eliminated each week until finally one wins a book contract and a panel spot at a Melbourne Writers Festival. If watching hair being cut can be fascinating, surely so can writing. 

The hair-dressing show, Shear Genius is particularly entertaining. It does have some strange rules:

1) Any celebrity hairdresser doing a guest appearance has to have a strange European accent. The only exceptions being one of the judges, John Vo, whose smile is so permanently broad, half his face must be shoved into a bulldog clip round the back of his head.

2) The host is not allowed to move. There’s no doubt Jacqueline Smith of Charlies Angel’s fame looks amazing for her age, but what is wrong with her legs? You never see her move. She’s either sitting down or standing up but never moving.It was only in the final episode of Season Two that she took her faltering first step.

Tabatha

Spinning off from this program is one of the contestants from the first season, an Australian hairdresser called Tabatha. She told it like it was in no uncertain terms and her loathing of one of the other contestants was absolute. Even in the ‘reunion’ episode the vitriol against him continued unabated. No wonder the viewers voted her their favourite. She’s now doing  her own show, Tabatha, a Gordon Ramsay type show, touring round hairdressing salons, swearing a lot and giving them a makeover: pulling hair out of the sink plughole as she screws her face up and abuses the owner.  It seems the biggest problems in these salons is husbands giving up their jobs a dry stone wallers and taking ‘the opportunity’ to work with their wives as salon managers.

Tabatha is sharp, funny and direct, in a way that is a total shock to her American victims - she alone makes the obvious make-over formula worth viewing. However last week as she tore through a New Jersey salon, she was upstaged by an unfortunate looking hairstylist who screamed ‘she’s an animal’ so furiously that the rose and thorn tattoo across her neck almost flew off and ignited on her quivering cigarette.