And what was she, the fairy Melusine?

 Am on a stupidly early train on the way to my best friend from uni's ordination to the diaconate of the Church of England. It's at St Paul's Cathedral which will be interesting. Not because I'm unfamiliar with it: when I was at secondary school we had an incredibly tedious founders day that happened at it, which involved having to wear smart casual dress and combine with the boys' school and their feeder school. Because capacity was limited you didn't have to go every year, only in set years (unless you were singing or playing an instrument but I wasn't musical in a "play big school events" sort of way and I wasn't in the choir because I was forced to do my homework in the library on a day that clashed with it. Quite vivid memories of the times I went, though. The first year my mum got me an ankle length skirt from Gap which was made of some kind of indestructible tough material and a blue blouse with a poncho. It was an incredibly Y2K outfit and did look quite good, the only problem being it was basically impossible to walk in that skirt. It did, however, mean I was not awkwardly wearing a business suit of my mum's which was what most other people did that first year, all looking somewhat ridiculous because they were, you know, 11.

Anyway, yesterday I started really freaking out about what to wear to this and how to do my hair,  which at first I attributed to it being a big event which required an outfit, something of which my life is somewhat short these days. Plus I've been growing my hair a bit: after a decade of an undercut it started causing sensory issues when it was slightly grown out and as I am (once again) shorter on cash than I would like I couldn't just go for more regular haircuts. So at the moment I have chin length hair which I can tie back if it is bothering me, and I am probably going to grow it a bit longer and see how I feel about that. All this means that I am currently having to remember how to style long hair, and work out how to style long hair in a masculine way when I want to do that. (Sometimes I am enjoying the playing with androgyny aspect of the current length). 

Anyway, initially thought the freakout was that combined with not having seen uni friend since 2019 or very early 2020. Then, as I was trying to find hair mousse for the first time since, idk, 2008 or 2009, it occurred to me that one of the issues might be that this was an echo of a thing at school. And a thing which used to be particularly stressful because it involved large amounts of formless time traveling to and from the Cathedral and waiting around with classmates, so you didn't have the safety of lessons. 

None of this made me worry less about my outfit, but it was an interesting thing to realise