During a visit to the local haunted hairdressers for a long overdue pampering, Bettie ends up making a spiritual connection with a long-dead ancestor.
So where was I, diary? Ah, yes, I needed to tell all about how my innocent hairdressing appointment resulted in me awakening my dormant psychic abilities and getting on the ghost phone to good old grannie.
Now, before I go any further, I must state that secretly I’m a very spiritual person. For a start, I have my chakras centered on Medicare and once employed my very own Feng Shui Zen Master. Though the sum total of his input was to inform me that the waste bin was in the relationship corner of our bedroom. Now, doesn’t that make a whole bunch of sense.
I also have a great respect for the dead, but this is totally due to grannie being an honest-to-goodness medium. Trouble was she didn’t so much see dead people as smell them. And in the height of summer in New Orleans, that’s not a gift, I can tell you. But really, the spirits used to tell her everything – what wars were coming, what shoes to buy, everything – and, as she said, three hundred billion dead people can’t all be wrong.
What with all the rushing to relocate to this hardly-paradise island, it had to be said I was in desperate need of some ‘swimming in Lake Me’ time. Now, I know what this sounds like. That I’m one of those sad, assed Americans who’ll pay anything to stay young forever, but that’s not true. I’m on a pretty tight budget, here, but boy, do I long to be back at the age when I turned heads not stomachs.
Though it was upstairs over a butchers, it turned out Time To Dye Salon De Beauté and Charcuterie was a revelation. Not only were they an award-winning, top-rate tonsorium – scooping up the coveted Helena Bonham Carter Crazy Crimping Award three years running – the place was also actually haunted. Now I know that sounds crazy, but folks who don’t believe me should get right on down to Baz and Lionel’s for an appointment. I mean, things go on there that would put the willies up most people.
Showing an interest, after my wash, tie and dye session, the boys whipped out a ouija board and in no time we were nattering to my dead grannie like she’d never fallen from that Welcome Santa Parade float while dressed as a jolly green goblin, impaling herself on her own pointed elf ears. It was a family tragedy. Still, as soon as the cosmic call connected, I asked her if there was anything she wanted to pass on to the living world. The planchette pinged over to ‘Yes’ and we all waited with baited breath. Then an eerie voice drifted across the salon, imparting grannie’s last words of wisdom:
“Remember! Remember! If ya got it, honey, flaunt it. And if ya ain’t, keep it hidden in a burlap sack.”
Well, after all that channelling of passed-on progenitors, I was plumb wore out. Which was not a good state of affairs, as next on my agenda of major crapola was the festive run-up to spending Christmas on this frozen rock.
Ha, diary! Like that’s ever gonna happen…
