This one is always a funny topic when I think about the habits myself and my mother shared in regards to our grooming, yes grooming as like our canine companions we always seen it as a necessity not a luxury. After my week long sabbatical done the slippery slope of stage 4 (depression) I can actually say with a smile I feel fresh and a lot more positive. I needed my exterior to match my interior. I decided to have a new colour treatment done by my lovely hairdresser. Many of you who have known me for a long time probably know me in recent years as blond (ish). I have been every colour known in the spectrum to be honest, except green…. I mean why? I remember that fateful ski trip (which we will be returning to soon) with myself and Billy using blue hair gel to tint our dark locks into a weird dark blue mess. We thought we were cutting edge…. safe to say advancements in hairology have expanded much since then. In recent times I have been a lot more conventional though I do remember a time 7 years ago having the misfortune of being bright orange for a week.
The problem was I was trying to be too clever and decided to strip my hair and replace my beach blond with some nice auburn locks. In theory it worked…. strip the hair of all colour using a rancid bleach concoction then apply a colour afterwards. All sounds relatively simple. The women on the box alludes to how easy it would be. I mean she wasn’t a chemist judging by the dim light behind her eyes so if she could achieve it then anyone could right? At this stage I need to point out that I am fully aware that the lady on the box is a model and she has definitely not used this product however we do tell ourselves these little lies to put our minds at rest.
Stage 1: Apply bleach all over and leave for X amount of minutes… simple
Stage 2: Wash out bleach…. straight forward
Stage 3: Live with the abomination that is left in the devastating wake of this awful procedure…… not easy…. not even slightly.
As I dried my hair immediately I could tell that all the goodness had been striped away like an exorcism of nutrients. My hair was in shambles….. and bright orange. How orange? Imagine those leprechauns you see in ever Irish novelty shop… that colour of orange. Yikes.
Ok so I knew it was stage one and to be honest I wanted to go a nice caramel colour so thought ill wait until the following evening. I had to wear a hat for work at this stage so I wasn’t worried about showing off this dead awful look. That was until my manager removed my cap and declared in front of everyone what an eegit I was for dying my hair this atrocious colour. Me being me I decided to go along with it and pretend that It was intentional. I picked up my swagger and strutted away secretly burning from the inside out. I went home that evening and got my beautiful caramel dye and followed the usual steps.
Step 1: Apply colour all over and leave for x amount of minutes… sounds familiar
Step 2: Wash out colour….. Am I noticing a pattern here?
Step 3: Basque in the colour of my beautiful caramel hair………. wrong!
Ok so it turned out again this weird orange colour. The smiling Siren on the box was mocking me with her gleeful gaze, almost with a sly wink. What a bitch she was, I thought. How dare she have beautiful caramel hair that I am almost certain she paid more than 5.99 for! I blow dried my hair to see would it look any better dry. It actually looked nicer wet. It was luminous. I wanted to cry. My now straw like Worzel Gummage doo was not a good look. Thankfully I had arranged this little experiment next to my day off. I rushed to boots the next day and purchased black…. surely you cant go wrong with that tone… or is it a shade…. I know its definitely not a colour…. never mind that’s not really the point.
So as I followed steps one two and three for the third time I was returned to semi normal looking hair. Ok so I looked a little emo like…. All I needed was painted nails and eyeliner and I would of been good to go in a mosh pit. It was definitely better than orange. I rang mummy that evening to tell her about my hair nightmare and the pair of us had such a giggle over my little misadventure.
Mummy was always extremely proud of her hair, as she should be. I seen photos of her as a teenager with hair down to her tush. I kid you not? She resembled a brunette Rapunzel type, though she would never let a man try and rank our her proud roots to get into her chambers, I assure you! Mummy had a weekly and monthly ritual for her beautiful locks (which later turned into a Diane Keaton Bob). Once a week she would get a wash and blowdry. In my whole life I seen her wash her own hair once. She would go every Friday around 13:00 to her local Salon which she adored. She would return with the usual look in her eye to say, “where is my compliment?”, which of course I would oblige in this particular ritual. Once a month she would book her appointment for her roots. Mummy, like myself, was at times an aspiring blond. Not an all over just highlights. Naturally she had a brunette colour with a red tinge in just the right light. Sometimes I catch myself looking in the sun at my own hair and can sometimes see this genetic trait. I only ever seen my mothers roots once, when she became ill. That’s how we knew how sick she really was. My mother would climb over hot coals than let her appearance fall short of her own demanding expectations.
It would always get to Thursday when her hair would start to flick out at the sides and she would tell me that she couldn’t wait to get her weekly blow-dry. It always amazed me how it sat to perfection for 6 days. My hair and most normal humans hair takes one nights sleep. She was rather superhuman in this regard. When we were saying our final goodbyes to mummy her hair looked weird. Her fringe was wrong, it was a weird parting, and she wasn’t wearing her glasses. I had seen my mum in one light her whole life and this really disturbed me. My aunt went in to see her and in great fashion came back and said, “She doesn’t look right!”. I loved this about my aunt. She cut all the respectable bullshit and called it like it was. I agreed and she asked would she like us for her do her hair. “YES!”, I exclaimed. We went in 5 minutes later and after a quick comb and a bit of Clarins lipstick I looked down and seen my mummy. She looked like an angel. Ok so the hair wasn’t perfect, we could hardly ask someone to do a quick blow-dry, could we? Is that a thing? She looked much more like the mummy I was used to.
I always thought I was rather Zen about the whole post-death thing. I always thought I would think of it as she had passed and this body is just a ‘vessel’, mummy is not here anymore. To a certain extent I still believe that however when you are looking at the woman who raised you for 33 years, it changes the rules of the game considerably. I just wanted her to look herself, and in the back of my mind I was thinking more about what she would think than anyone else. With her glasses on and her blond Diane Keating Bob I was ready to say goodbye….
We think of our hair in such simple terms however it meant a lot to my mother and we even discussed getting her a fabulous wig if it ever came to that point. It didn’t needless to say. She fretted that it would look cheap and awful and I assured her that wigs have came a long way and I would take her to a drag queen shop as they do the best wigs imaginable. I can picture me and her sat in a fabulous studio requesting a Diane Keating Bob. I’m sure it would of been a great story in itself. She did not need one in the end though and I am rather glad in a way as she worried more about that than most people would. She was very proud of her hair.
So after a week of feeling rather glum and turning a corner I decided to write todays blog on hair.
My mother would of loved that.
xx
A Grievers Guide to the Galaxy 