I’m currently fantasising about how I could justify a legitimate trip to Wales, where the hairdressing salons opened yesterday.
I can’t stand my hair another minute. It has morphed during lockdown from rats’ tails to an explosion in a glass factory and finally, a faded cloud of candyfloss. I have no hands for hair.
Mind you, Wales wouldn’t be my destination of choice. Once we took a driving holiday through it, north to south, in the most appalling weather for years. Incessant rain showed off the glorious iridescent purples and blues of the slate quarries, but it had little else to recommend it. We stopped in booked-ahead B&Bs, one of which turned out to be a Welsh version of Bates’ Motel. Our toddler Daughter Dear howled unceasingly throughout the whole journey and there was a bank strike. We made it back to the Norn Iron ferry with a single fiver and two teaspoonsful of petrol. But registering 10/10 on the Richter scale of crowning disaster was the hairdo I got in Harlech. The Loving Spouse looked at the result and remarked, “Did they charge you for that?”
But I digress. Having starved since student days in order to get my hair done regularly, I have no hair management skills, few products and little equipment. (“How hard can it be?” I hear sceptics mutter.) The knack of washing one’s hair in the shower eludes me. Blinded by shampoo, I can’t find my way out, the floor is swimming. Happiness is a salon back basin.
‘Dry shampoo’, seen as saviour, is the equivalent of sticking your head in the dustbag of a hoover plus the social embarrassment of constant scratching. In desperation I hoked in the roofspace for help, finding a half-perished plastic bag of yellowed foam rollers. A clue to their age – also in the bag, a pair of 1980s shoulder-pads and an elderly hairdryer forgotten by Daughter Dear twenty years ago. What a siege! My arms ached wrestling with recalcitrant clumps of hair and submitting myself to a blast of a dryer with two settings – too hot and too cold. The result was, shall we say, a bit ‘Mrs Brown’. This farce has been re-enacted as infrequently as is hygienically feasible.
My hair and I have a long inglorious history. As a child, I wanted plaits. My mother insisted on the Saturday night ordeal of ringlets. As a student in the Sixties, I had every look there was, whether I suited it or not. In the early days of romance, the Loving Spouse (then merely ‘the boyfriend’) said, “I wish you’d grow your hair.” This being before Women’s Lib, I did. What is it about men and long hair? It was hot and heavy and I had to wear it up in case I got nits from my mixed infant pupils. One day my hairdresser suggested a new style. I came back lightheaded with a very Seventies short shaggy cut called the ‘coupe sauvage’ and a great swathe of long auburn hair in my hand. The boyfriend walked out and didn’t come back for three days. “Promise you’ll grow it out again?” he asked. “I promise,” was my ardent response. Did I? Did I heck! I found a photograph recently with the offending hairstyle and noticed I was wearing my engagement ring – so no lasting damage.
I’ve had my hair done in nearly every major city in the British Isles and quite a few in Europe and South Africa. In New York, the Fifth Avenue ‘do’ I paid an arm and a leg for, lasted as far as Tiffany’s before collapsing like a pancake. I know I speak for many female readers who believe that if your hair’s right, the rest will pass muster. In my salon, the client is masked and gowned, the staff aproned, masked and visored; social distancing and turnover of customers scrupulously observed and well-nigh hospital standards of hygiene prevail. It’s hair, not heart surgery they’re doing. I’m tearing my own out with frustration and rapidly turning into a little old silver-haired lady nobody will recognise.
C’mon Stormont! Both Arlene’s and Michelle’s roots are in dire need of attention….
