Celebratory Hairdressing!

Welcome, involuntarily hirsute reader. Momentous events everywhere this week, one of which was of course Helen reaching a half century. To mark that occasion, we indulged in a bit of celebratory hairdressing: Helen has long had an ambition of going purple for the 50th birthday:

At the same time, my hair's been getting a bit straggly, and I've been yearning for what the cool kids are calling the COVID buzzcut. So when a colleague pointed me at a set of Ferrari-engined hair clippers, I had to one-up him and buy the gold plated version. Helen summarised this in one word: "Boycie".

Wielding the clippers is surprisingly difficult, and maybe having purple hair doesn't help.

But anyway, after all that hair-related activity, Helen had an exciting birthday including a quiz and a cake-related t-shirt:

Of course, this has been a momentous week for the US in general, with events nationwide showing there is a huge amount of work still to do to eliminate systemic racism and prejudice of all kinds from society. That in itself is a sobering thought and one worthy of some reflection for all of us, but it's compounded by what, to my libertarian European eyes, can only be described as an excessively authoritarian response from those in power. Now is the time to engage with the problems and work out how you can help, not try to disperse them with tear gas.

Anyway, let's go back to our more usual lighthearted fare. This week it's been hot, whichever units of temperature you choose to use:

It's also been a time for one of those bits of good, innocent fun which have been a pleasant surprise for us here in the US. Here, if they were at school, the Seniors (that's 6th formers I think) would be graduating from High School (that is, finishing up school and getting ready to go to University at the end of the summer). Here this is a Big Deal; there are signs up everywhere celebrating graduations and it seems like a significant rite of passage. The US equivalent of slipping off to the Crown in Highfield for an illicit under-age half a cider (hypothetically speaking, of course) was a parade through the streets here of our local Senior graduates, and they even had gowns and mortar boards to go with it:

Just like in the UK, our local teenagers were a touch sheepish about this, which lent the parade the usual US flavour of good, clean fun as per my comments above.

So we're in the middle of a pandemic, there's been significant social unrest, and for good measure this week we had a wildfire just the other side of San Jose too. What can next week throw at us to take things up a notch? Stay tuned, gentle reader...