I am a very busy person. I do not know what I actually achieve, and when I make statements like that, I feel the weight of a million condemning eyes on me, silently accusing me of HAVING NO JOB. But still. The fact remains – I am supremely busy.
So when, last week, I decided to be proactive about my appearance and try to improve myself (having let myself go somewhat in recent weeks as I have tried and failed to move our lives seemlessly from The Shed to The Actual House, mislaying the car keys and my sanity in the process), I was hoping to make an improvement.
What actually happened was this:
I finished what I was doing. That might have been faffing in The Shed or it might have been faffing elsewhere, but I finished some important faffing. I sat at my kitchen table with a box of hair highlighting kit. I groaned. I’d rather be faffing. This was not going to be fun. I opened the box, and reluctantly decided to go for it. Never an easy decision – the process is long, protracted, boring and painful. The metal poker hurts, the holey cap is crap and the blue stuff? It gets everywhere. And smells. But I had ambitiously decided to try for the Cindy Crawford blonde-atop-brunette summer look, and I was on a mission.
Five minutes in, and the crappy holey cap had been penetrated too hard by the hurty pointy stick, and the strands of hair that were coming through were as thick as a sausage. So, I discarded the crapcap which failed to do up under my chin anyway, and reached for my domestic tin foil. (I hate those caps anyway. I can never hear when I’m wearing those. And I need my ears out. In case of emergencies.)
With the foil, I pretended to be an actual hairdresser. I’ve seen them do it! How hard could it be? Take a strand of hair, paint it with smelly blue stuff, roll it up and tuck it in. I did one of these at each of my temples, and another somewhere random, just for luck.
Now, at this point, I began to realise that foils are an art. I gave up: I’d done three. That was enough. Then I reached into the bin for the broken cap. It still had a bit of life left, so I apologised to it, and pulled it back onto my head, rendering myself deaf to attack once more, then pulled a few more strands through, of indeterminate thickess. My poor scalp.
By now, the tips of my fingers were bleached (no gloves were provided – am I supposed to keep those in stock? What am I? A hairdresser?), and my head was strangely warm. I was also beginning to feel a little light-headed from the fumes. Or was that the pain? Either way, I was not having fun. I discovered a clear plastic bag amongst the kit, and put it over my blue, squidgy head, and then (admittedly) had a teeny bit of fun prodding the hairy bleachy mixture under the plastic and watching my hair turn yellow before my eyes.
Now, timings… I’m never very good at those. Was it ten minutes since I applied the first bit of stuff? Or ten minutes since the last? Hey, by now, I figured I was heading for hair hell regardless.
When I had decided enough was enough, and I could take the noxious fumes no longer, I had fun and games removing the sodding holey crap cap. The hair sausages, by now matted, bleached and entwined, were not coming back through those holes without a fight, so I ended up ripping half of them out before I could even see if I’d achieved my goal.
And when I did? Well, I knew instanstly that this hair-tuation was not going to go unnoticed. I washed my mop and dried it, then managed to cover up the nicotine-addicted badger stripes on both of my temples by wearing my hair down. But, rather like Violet in Lemony Snickett’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, when I need to concentrate on something, and formulate a plan, I must get my hair off my face and so, when in the playground later that day, I revealed my hair crime, unwittingly, to the public.
Eyes darted to my yellow stripes, mouths twitched with unasked questions. What is the etiquette for a bad hair day? Does one ignore it? Lie about it? Or be brutally honest? I met all three responses, many times over between 3.08 and 3.15 pm, and then Little Seymour Number Two emerged from her classroom and shrieked.
“Oh God!” she yelled. I momentarily forgot my hair whilst I wondered what could have prompted her to blaspheme so publicly in the playground of her church school.
“What?” I asked, thinking maybe I had a hole in my gusset, for her shrieks are usually directed at my attire.
“What have you done to your hair?” she questioned, half laughing, half crying, half trying to hide me from any passing humans.
I feigned indifference. “It’s O.K,” I lied. “It’ll grow out. It’ll do”.
We went home, me walking three paces behind my children, with my head hanging low, and my chain-smoking badger hair glowing in the late afternoon light.
*
The next day, I had forgotten my hair entirely. So when I chucked it in a pony tail, as is my wont, and ventured to the school, I was met by a few friends who all, very kindly, took pity on me. They offered help and advice, and almost counselling, I suppose. They were concerned; what sort of woman does that to herself? I found myself declaring, whilst trying to save some positives from the situation, that this was an exercise in anti-vanity, and that my hair didn’t define me.
I’d had the same conversation with my mother, Grandma E, the night before, when I showed her my new “do”. She didn’t seem to see what all the fuss was about (I don’t think she was wearing her glasses), but when I told her I needed a severe hair cut anyway, and that I might just do a full-on Sinead O’Connor, she exlcimed how awful that would be – for a woman’s hair is her crowning glory. This surprised me – my mum is normally not quite so conventional in her beliefs.
My mother and I had an small altercation. There are some people for whom their hair is indeed a crown of glory – I guess you could say that Bryce Dallas Howard has splendid hair, or maybe Kate Middleton and even Kim Kardashian. But all I have is dry, fake orange, broken strands of shit on my head. How can that be worth more than my brain? Or my personality? Or my soul? (OK, I’ve gone too far, but you get the gist.)
However, there I was, faffing with mine as if I did care, and ended up with locks that resembled marble cake, only much less delicious. I always knew vanity would bite me in the bum.
Number One came home and laughed at me. She does that a lot. Check out her Youtube channel, designed specifically to ridicule Mummy.
But it is OK! One of my friends recommended a MARVELLOUS product – Clairol Root Touch-Up, and within ten minutes, I had corrected my error. It was so easy! I didn’t have to shave my head as a martyr to a woman’s worth, and I no longer ran the risk of child blasphemy in the playground, or withering looks from strangers. Or – God forbid – my mother’s wrath.
I am still tempted to cut my mop short though. I always did like the idea of being G.I. Jane. No straightening! No brushing! No crappy caps and putrid highlighting mixture! All I need is a vest and some dog tags and I’d be good to go. Or perhaps I should just invest in an appointment with a real hairdresser, for a change. It might just be that simple.
0 Comments