U.N.S.T.A.B.L.E.
Okay so this blondeness thing has hit a nerve. I don’t mean with blonde people – seeing as I’m an honorary (or should that be counterfeit) one – I’m allowed to insult my own. No, I mean that I’m afraid my blondeness has become contagious. Take J for example: perfectly sensible and organised until she met me, juggling a home, a full time job, motherhood and a highly successful greyhound rescue organisation all while barely breaking into a sweat and now – poof – it’s all vanished in a puff of disorganisation and befuddlement: absent pet passports, dogs missing their connecting transports, lost cheque books…
My Mum’s another one – the most level-headed and organised person I know, she takes a trip over the water to see me and what happens? All her paperwork vanishes mysteriously at the check in desk and she’s left stuttering and apologising to the bored, orange-faced Ryanair girl at the counter (don’t they look in the mirror when they’re doing that fake tan thing? Hello! You’re the colour of a Satsuma!).
So, carelessly whiling away several hundred Euro worth of call credit (as we do on a regular basis until one of us realises they’re talking to thin air), we came up with a plan: Unwavering Non- judgmental Support for Terminally or Acutely Bewildered Lackadaisical Eejits, or UNSTABLE for short (catchy eh?). Figuring that there must be more of us out there, we’re prepared to donate our time (usually spent hunting for things that we’ve lost or apologising for things we haven’t done properly or indeed forgot to do altogether) for free in support of the hopelessly ineffective amongst us.
After all, we figured, we can’t be the only ones that could do with a coping strategy a little better than just wafting through life like a Will-o’-the-wisp leaving in our wake a trail of havoc of epic proportions and pretending not to notice.
Once we’ve worked on UNSTABLE’s mission statement (which we’ll get round to … oh, I don’t know, shortly), we thought we’d start by publishing some supportive coping strategies for our bemused brethren such as:
1. If in doubt, lie
2. If still in doubt, blame somebody else (remember the sage words of the Disreputable one: ‘never apologise, never explain’)
3. Encouraging the use of kinder euphemisms such as ‘oh it appears to have become misplaced’ instead of ‘shit, I’ve lost it’
4. The blaming of technology: ‘I’m afraid my computer crashed and lost all my data’ or ‘no, I’m sure I never received that text’
5. The practical use of vagueness as a distraction, for example: ‘hmmm? Did who ask me to do what by when?’ a valuable tactic to buy one more time to concoct either a lie (see 1. above) or think of someone else to blame (see 2. above).
We’ll let you know the outcome of the first committee meeting…em…that is, when J finds her phone (she gave it to a little old man but that’s another story) and if I don’t run out of diesel, oh and I seem to have lost my handbag and…well, there’s no hurry, surely?.
