First up, Uggs needs his bath-bomb ingredients to test out before making his main Christmas batch. Many of these can actually be bought in the baking aisle of the ordinary supermarket, so he’s already got most of what he needs, but citric acid costs a lot for small amounts there, so we head to an Asian shop to get it. Uggs said he asked about it in the local Oakdale Pharmacy and they wondered was he on drugs and he doesn’t know why (probably best not to either!).
We buy what he needs and have to drag Dixie away from a v v vibrant henna, because one ‘scientific’ experiment is enough to be going on with and if she ends up with orange hair we’ll all be in trouble. We nip into a health shop and Uggs gets grapefruit oil to make the bombs nice and smelly. To be extra thrifty we’ll root around our bathrooms for other essential oils and donate some portion of those to him – I call it a spirit of ‘waste not, want not’.
Dixie is no help on our quest because she just wants to clothes shop, even though she hasn’t got any money. She keeps wandering off or distracting us. We eventually give in and agree to visit Primark and River Island with her but, by then, the damage is done and all she wants is style checking, so we leave her to that and agree to meet her on O’Connell Street an hour later. So much for her getting all inspired to create gifts for others. Uggs is loyally coming to the wool shop but I feel a bit like I’m being stalked as he trails around after me.
‘I have to think about Gypsy’s little coat,’ he says, and I remember he has vowed to knit her one. Sometimes, though he is one of my Besties, I think he is odd and that mutt even odder.
I spend a long time trying to persuade myself to stay within a strict budget on yarns but I fall in love with a deep purple colour in a cashmere mix and, even though it’ll have to be knitted on smallish needles and therefore take longer, I know I have to have it for Gran’s fingerless gloves.* I get a ball of black double-knit cotton and a lime green for Dermot’s hat, which is now going to have stripes as a result, and there are some balls of chunky light purple wool in the bargain basket for Mum’s cowl, along with a bobbly kind of mix that might look good as a fringing for that.†
I should be glowing that I have done so well with my purchases but everywhere we go I see posters for the Teen Factor X auditions. The whole world will turn up and I won’t have a chance of progressing. It’s getting me down. Then it occurs to me that it’s all over Facebook too, so it’s not like everyone doesn’t know about it; the posters are just like tinsel on the readily available information. AND, while I’m at it, there have been adverts for it on television and radio. I really am densely stupid sometimes.
Uggs stops me just before I get mown down by a taxi as I blindly cross a road. The angry, blaring horn brings me back to the Dublin street he has hauled me back on to.
‘What’s up, Jen?’ he asks. ‘You are so not you right now.’
Oh no. There is something so trusting and trustworthy about his face that I blab all about wanting to try out for the show. It’s like I’m having an out-of-body experience as I hear myself tell him all about my fears and how I feel I can’t NOT try out now, and the song I’m considering and so on.
‘I think it’s a great idea,’ he says, and I can tell he means it. ‘You should defo go for it.’
‘But it’s a secret,’ I say. ‘You can’t tell anyone.’ And then, to make this a hundred milliondy times worse, I add, ‘Not even Dixie.’
NO! I’ve said a Bad Thing. THE Bad Thing.
We both realize that I have made a secret between our small gang of friends, two against one. I have to take it back but I CAN’T. If Uggs keeps this secret, I have divided us, the Gang, me (and no one else), by asking him to keep this knowledge to himself.
There is a painful silence between us.
I am more miserable than ever. So is Uggs. But if I agree to tell Dixie, then that will make it even MORE real. I’m not sure the Jenny Q nerves can handle that. My bag of quality knitting stuff feels as heavy as concrete as we walk along the street to meet Dixie.
My BAD.
