I have a terrible habit of not doing things. Or rather, of doing them rather intermittently. For instance, I have not been to a dentist since we lived in Edinburgh. That’s 7 years. I had such a good dentist there, she never prodded my gums or made me cry. But in London I went through periods of being on less than break-even for an income which had me forever hoarding money when I did earn. Dentistry became a luxury item.
This was not helped by the boss who spent the company’s entire monthly earnings on a motorbike (for which he had no licence) and all other liquid assets on no less than five rotating girlfriends. That I got to use the bike and that he gave me a pair of diamond earrings for my birthday did not make up for the fact that I was not paid in three months and suddenly found that next months’ rent would depend entirely on what I could get for my body. To all bosses out there: not paying your staff and then giving them diamond earrings goes under ‘what not to do to employees’. (She wrote, slowly twiddling a pair of diamond earrings.)
But this whole money-hoarding-need spread, and eventually took over my hair. As a kid I was never happy with my hair. I put this down to my sister’s tyrannical dictation of my hairdo — I had to have a fringe as ‘the high forehead makes you look deceptively intelligent’, and shortish because ‘long hair makes you look short’ — I love my sister, but I sure as hell didn’t want her back then. I think she was making up for having to wear braces on her teeth by making me look like an idiot. (She’s gonna kill me… she’s simply gonna kill me… I’m ready! I still have all my teeth and nice hair, I’ll make a pretty corpse.)
I came to terms with my hair eventually. Once I started making my own decisions about it. Once I got over my need for an afro (what was that all about??), forgot about the bleach (could fetch no more than a couple of pence a pop with THAT look… blonde — not for me) and pretty much allowed it to grow as it wished. I did at one point, after a particularly disastrous perm, chop it all off to about 1 inch, from half way down my back. This came as a bit of a shock to Kevin, but he got used to it amazingly quickly and it worked wonders for our sex life. Which perhaps is a bit disturbing. And it’s the only time I’ve looked reasonably cool when taking my crash-helmet off. For people with straight hair, the only hairdos that work with helmets are super-short or totally shaved. That thing about shaking out your long, shiny locks as you take your helmet off — ONLY IN HOLLYWOOD! The land of professional cheating. In reality your hair comes out squashed to your face, greasy and kinked, and because of the tightness of the helmet you invariably have red marks all over your forehead. Especially me with my BIG, INTELLIGENT forehead with space for extra marks.
So. Going to the hairdresser ended up on the back burner as well and was reduced to an annual event when my hair was so tangly all the conditioner in the world could do nothing to save it. And for nearly 20 years that event took place in Norway with my trusted hairdresser Helene at Studio Alf. But seeing as my hair had long since reached that candy floss state with no prospect of going to Norway in the immediate future, the annual event was scheduled for Thursday this week with a hairdresser who regularly cuts the hair for the actors at the iT.
I normally trust hairdressers, at least the ones with a good reputation and if I’ve been happy with them in the past. And this one had cut my hair very successfully once before. So I was not worried when I left it all to him thinking ‘it’s just hair and it will all grow back quite quickly if I’m not totally happy’.
Yeah.
He dried it completely straight, and it was shiny and bouncy and silky and lovely.
Next day. I’m not great at styling; I tend to run out of arms and fingers and all that stuff that hairdressers seem to have an abundance of. So it was not so straight and all that. In the evening I applied a load of hairspray and succeeded in looking like Linda Evans in Dynasty, only with orange hair. And minus the shoulder pads.
This morning, after sleeping on the mess, my loving husband said with no little amount of glee ‘you have a mullet! — what’s your football team?!’ Funnybones. I have informed him we shall never have sex again because of that comment which was made before I’d had a cup of tea and my regular injection of a sense of humour. He will not be forgiven any time soon.
Tomorrow I’ll find out how the new look works with/after a round of crash helmet. I’m going for a bash around the countryside with Thomas. I shall bring a razor for which there will be one of three uses: a) no use b) shave my head or c) slit my wrists. My money is on b, though another facetious remark by Lord&Master may push me in the direction of c. Or perhaps d — slit his throat.
