I can count on one hand the number of times I have felt truly content with life, and standing in the swanky bar of an opulent Sydney hotel hugging double Oscar-winner Emma Thompson is definitively one of them.
And it wasn't all due to the hug, although it was as warm and engaging as you'd expect from an iconic British movie star. It was because of the interview we've just completed, which had twisted and turned through everything from motherhood regret to movies and orgasms.
It was a rare case of meeting your heroes actually having a happy ending.
As I exited the hotel, still on a high, I asked my podcast producer if I could see the picture she'd snapped of us post-interview. Within the tangle of recording equipment in her arms she unearthed the phone, and I looked eagerly for the little keepsake of me and the woman whose movies I'd grown up watching.
But there in the picture, nestled between Emma, the film's director Sophie Hyde and I, was my eternal nemesis. The one thing guaranteed to surreptitiously ruin all of my photos, special events, and relationships (and not always in that order). A spectre that has plagued me throughout childhood and into my adult years.
My fringe.
And not just my fringe, if you think this story is sounding a little too dramatic (although if that is the case already, I suggest you do not read any further) but the shape in which the small section of hair that hung across my forehead had contorted itself into.
Because despite the extensive blow-drying that had taken place that morning, the rollers that were wound through it, and the blend of hairspray and dry shampoo that were sprayed with such intensity that their combined potency would decimate a trio of elephants, my carefully quaffed fringe now closely resembled two freeze-dried worms.
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