Start of college life: how I coped with fear

Avoidance activity

I am in Birmingham, sitting in a cafe opposite a hairdresser’s. I’m trying to find the courage to go in and book an appointment. I’ve been here three quarters of an hour and I am on my second large cappuccino. The table I’m sitting at has a wobble, so I’ve spilt some of the first cup and most of the second down the white trousers I was so proud of as I swanked in front of the mirror in my hotel room this morning.

I can see the hairdressers or stylists as they prefer to be called, as they work. There is a man with a ponytail who is perambulating around the salon, stopping now and then to frown and grab a bank of customer’s hair. There are two girl stylists: one has had her white blonde hair shaved and then allowed it explode into hundreds of hedgehog’s quills; the other has hair any self-respecting woman would scalp for: thick and lustrous. All three are dressed in severe black. Even undertakers allow themselves to wear a little white on the neck and cuffs, but undertakers don’t take their work half as seriously, and there lies the problem. I am afraid of hairdressers.

When I sit in front of the salon mirror stuttering and blushing, and saying that I don’t know what I want, I know I am the client from hell. Nobody is going to win Stylist of the year with me as a model.

‘Madam’s hair is very th …’,they begin to say ‘thin’, think better of it and change it for ‘fine’—ultimately, coming out with the hybrid word ‘thine’. I have been told my hair is ‘thine’ many times. Are they taught to use it at college? Along with other conversational openings, depending on the season: ‘Done your Christmas shopping?’ ‘Going away for Easter?’ ‘Booked your summer holiday?’ ‘You are brown, been way?’ ‘Nights are drawing in, aren’t they?’ ‘Going away for Christmas?’

I am hopeless at small talk (and big talk). I’m also averse to looking at my face in a mirror for an hour and a half. I behave as though I am a prisoner on the run.

I’ve looked at wigs in stores, but I am too shy to try them on, and I still remember the horror of watching a bewigged man jump into a swimming pool and then seeing what looked like a medium sized rodent break the surface and float on the water. He snatched at his wig, thrust it anyhow on top of his head and left the pool. I didn’t see him for the rest of the holiday.

There is a behavior trait that a lot of writers share—it is called avoidance activity. They will do anything to avoid starting to write: clean a drain, phone their mentally confused uncle in Peru, change the cat’s litter tray. I’m prone to this myself, in summer I deadhead flowers, even lobelia. In winter I’ll keep a fire going stick by stick, anything to put off the moment of scratching marks on virgin paper.

I am indulging an avoidance activity now. I’ve just ordered another cappuccino, I’ve given myself a sever talking: For God’s sake, woman! You are forty-seven years of age. Just cross the road, push the salon door open, and ask for an appointment!

It didn’t work. I’m now in my room, and I have just given myself a do-it-yourself hairdo, which consisted of a shampoo, condition and trim, with scissors on my Swiss army knife.

I can’t wait to get back to the Toni & Guy salon in Leicester. The staff there haven’t once called my hair ‘thine’ and they can do wonders with the savagery caused by Swiss army knife scissors.

Honey as medicine

When I get a sore throat, I always find a cup of tea with some honey very soothing. But I always assumed that the restorative power of honey was in my head. Historically, honey has been prescribed as a folk remedy for millennia. So I’ve been content to accept that honey is a tasty placebo or a silly substitute for real medicine. Now, my convictions are being challenged, as researchers are getting new evidence of honey’s medical benefits making honey a surprisingly effective cure-all.

Honey’s main effects come primarily from its antimicrobial properties. Most bacteria cannot grow in honey. I found this quite surprising, because bacteria love sugar. Honey contains around 40% fructose and 30% glucose making it a great treat for microbes. However, honey is also acidic and acids prevent the growth of bacteria. Although honey contains a fair amount of water, it’s supersaturated with sugar and does not provide support for bacterial growth.

Honey also contains a substance called glucose oxidase. When combined with water and oxygen, glucose oxidase forms gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide. In other words, diluted honey can serve as an excellent antiseptic, while being far less likely than ordinary hydrogen peroxide to harm already-damaged tissue. In practical terms, this means that honey applied on a wound promotes healing just as well as, or in many cases better than, conventional ointments and dressings. So, it not only prevents infection, but it also functions as an anti-inflammatory agent, reducing both swelling and pain and even scarring. So, honey has been shown to be extraordinarily effective in the treatment of wounds, burns, and surgical incisions.

Honey can be used not only outside of the body. It can help with many internal problems too. Thanks to its antimicrobial action, it soothes sore throats and kills the bacteria that sometimes cause them. There’s also the suggestion that it can reduce tooth decay. Moving down the esophagus and through the digestive tract, honey can help to heal ulcers and upset stomachs. It also regulates intestinal functions, alleviating both constipation and diarrhea. Honey also contains a variety of antioxidants, which may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Now that we’ve looked into the gleeful frenzy over the miraculous properties of honey, I want to temper your enthusiasm a bit. The bad news, if you can call it that, is that not all honey is created equal. The chemical composition of honey to a great extent depends on the source that makes the basis of honey. For example, honey from manuka, a bush in New Zealand, contains an antibacterial component, which is even more useful than ordinary honey in combating infections. Honeys vary not only in color and flavor, but in their medicinal properties, with some varieties being much more potent than others. But, because it’s impossible to regulate the comings and goings of millions of bees, there’s no way to guarantee that honey from any location will be chemically the same from year to year or free of contamination from pollutants the bees may have found their way into.

But it is important not to feed honey to a child under one year of age because honey sometimes contains botulinum spores. By the time of a child’s first birthday, there are usually enough beneficial bacteria in the digestive tract to make it be eaten safely. But anyway, honey supplies must be tested thoroughly and regularly.

The lure of the screen

I used to tell my parents that the first cell phone I will allow my own children to have will be a flip phone, incapable of Internet access and certainly without the ability to use “apps.” I argued that their first phones would have only the capabilities of my first phone – texting and calling – used primarily to contact their parents, and once in a while classmates to ask about homework. Isn’t it primarily what we think kids need phones for?

It took me a while to realize how impractical this was because if the first piece of a given technology that I possessed had been the same as my parents’, I would have been walking around with a cassette player in a world of iPods (incidentally, I loved my Sony Walkman CD player).

So maybe it was a little ridiculous for me to suggest this, but I think my point was (and is) valid. I look at young kids today and see that they’re as attached to mobile devices as their adult counterparts. It has come to the point where kids would rather sit inside and play games on their parents’ (or their own) iPads than go outside and play hide-and-seek, or catch, well, do anything.

And while I recall my parents telling me to drop the Legos or even the PlayStation controller and head outside, I, unlike these children, often actually did it, and when I didn’t, at least I was capable of breaking away to utter a response.

Today, however, youngsters are becoming so attached to technology at such a young age, as young as 3 or 4, that they are forgetting – if they ever learned in the first place – how to have fun without an iPad – literally.

In April, The Telegraph quoted North Ireland teacher Colin Kinney, who said his colleagues, “have concerns over the increasing numbers of young pupils who can swipe a screen but have little or no manipulative skills to play with building blocks or the like, or the pupils who cannot socialize with other pupils but whose parents talk proudly of their ability to use a tablet or smartphone.”

Kinney goes on to say that the “brilliant computer skills” these children possess is “outweighed by their deteriorating skills in pen and paper exams because they rely on instant support of the computer and are often unable to apply what they should have learned from their textbooks.”

It is true that we are moving into a world in which the ability to understand the language of computer coding is more important than the ability to read and write cursive. This, however, is not an excuse for the extent to which young children have become as addicted (or more so) to their mobile devices as their parents.

LeapFrog, the popular children’s brand is set to unveil a product called the Leap Band; the first wearable tech catered specifically toward children. And although the wristwatch-like product is designed to get kids up and moving, it raises a question for me: How young is too young?

I read that Google is considering allowing online accounts for children under the age of 13 (though giving their parents control over how the service is used).

Because of this cross-generational addiction, this week has been designated as “Screen Free Week” in schools around the country. The week is aimed at getting every member of the family away from computer and device use for just one week and head outside.

For parents, technology is now a dilemma: Give it to their kids at a young age so they are in line with their classmates in terms of computer prowess or withhold it and allow them the gift of social skills … only time will tell, but I fear the former is gaining ground.

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