Hair Angst

I am having hair angst.

Hair angst is when I suddenly notice my hair after months of ignoring it and decide that something really must be done because it looks a right old state.

Now, although my hair started to go grey in my twenties, and is now, I would say 90% grey (or white, to be exact) it is generally good hair. It is blessed with thickness and it grows well. It is strong hair. I could probably use it to pull a sheep from a bog (what???) but I haven't tried this test of hair strength, mostly because of lack of sheep in the vicinity. And bog. And a combination of the two thereof.

At the moment, it is long hair. It reaches to a point midway between my shoulder blades and provides an admirably swingy ponytail. It hasn't seen a pair of scissors for probably more than 2 years, except for when the fringe-bit starts to dangle in my eyes and I set about it with the kitchen scissors in a manner that can only be described as 'hacking.'  I have to have a fringe because I have a high forehead and when my forehead is out is dazzles folk in the sun. And also, because now I am middle-aged, a fringe also serves to hide the lines that are appearing there, thereby saving a fortune in Botox treatments. 

Over my life time my hair has been short-long-short-long-short-long ad infinitum. When it is long I think it is better short and when it is short I think it is better long. Basically, I have never been happy with my hair long or short or all the variant lengths in between.

Since the onset of grey it has been coloured various shades through dark brown to reddish brown to light brown/blonde. And I have never really been happy with these efforts either. Not even the time when I was feeling especially daring and had some red 'slices' added. But now, it seems, I am not happy with it being its au natural grey/ white either. For this I blame imminent second Grannyhood, because no matter how you say it, being a grandparent is the most ageing thought a woman in her forties can have.

Actually, it is the whole faff of hair 'doing' that irritates me. Some women like going to the hairdressers. They see it as pamper time, 'me' time, time to have a chat about holidays, a gossip about life, but here speaks a woman who remembers hiding in a greenhouse when she was 7 years old to avoid the mobile hairdresser who visited to administer the 1970s 'pudding basin' style which made me look like a boy. 

You go into a salon, sit in uncomfortable chairs, have your neck virtually broken during the washing process, get wet soapy dribbles down the back of your shirt and in your ears, suffer the discomfort of wondering if that feeling on your scalp once the dye has been applied is just 'tingling' or actual 'burning,' endure panic when there seems to be rather more hair being 'trimmed' than the carefully negotiated 'one inch', be abandoned by your stylist when she realises she is running half an hour late and her next customer has arrived and she has to flit between your and them, before finally paying an exorbitant amount of money for the honour of two hours of what is basically torture then going outside knowing this is the last three minutes your hair will look 'salon perfect' because it is bloody well raining. Again. 

And then there is also the tactful negotiation one has to manage in order to avoid being talked into buying ridiculously expensive 'products' - shampoo, conditioner, styling gel/mousse/wax, heat resistant blow dry serum, deep moisturising treatments etc etc which, you are warned, if you DO NOT buy to maintain your new 'do' will result in aforesaid 'do' reverting to haystack status within 24 hours. 

It is all too, too stressful. And thus I have not been to a hair salon for over two years, and until yesterday, when Hair Angst 2014 arrived from nowhere, (actually it might have had something to do with an ill-timed photograph in which I appeared presented as a mad old crazy cat lady who lived some place in the back of beyond that civilisation had failed to touch and where the weather was inclemently windy) I was very happy with this arrangement in my personal grooming schedule. Or rather lack of arrangement.

And so it is with a sense of impending doom that I am reaching the conclusion that something (and something likely to be very expensive) must be done. Some process must be administered to the locks. Something that will make me look less like a crazy grey-haired Granny and more, well, I don't know what, but, well, something else. 

There will be tears before hair straighteners, you mark my words.