A hairy story…

I can’t remember when the grey began to appear, forty something maybe. At first I quite liked it; just a hint at the temples, all very distinguished, but over the years it’s crept and crept until now… well, let’s just say that all my hair is a single uniform colour that mixes easily from just two monochromatic others.

I was born brighter, much brighter with ginger hair. It didn’t last long, within a few months it had turned to a startling white blonde; I never had the blue eyes to go with it though; my eyes have always been black. I spent my entire sunny childhood blond - and then I tumbled, screaming and shouting, into my teens, where it muddied up to an unsatisfactory and mediocre dirty brown. It seemed that I woke up one morning and the light had gone out of my hair, like somebody had switched off a bulb inside my head. Probably they had, so many things seem to disappear when you lose the child in you. Anyway my hair changed to the colour of a small cheese eating rodent, mouse I think you might call it

To combat this mediocrity I started to dye my hair to match the music I was revolving at the time. First it was a bright red as Ziggy played guitar, then a purple black when Roxy hit the scene. That black was my first taster of grey because for some reason it didn’t cover completely - the top of my head was raven but as it progressed towards my ears it became greyer and greyer - a shade of things to come you might say. I couldn’t help thinking, as I stared into the sage green plastic framed bathroom mirror, that I looked like a badger… Bryan Ferry and Badger Music? No, it doesn’t quite have the same ring does it?

Later, as Wham rapped and Duran Duran danced across the sand, my hair was highlighted and low-lighted, tipped and tinted, blonded, ambered and shaded with every hue of brown until even I wasn’t completely sure what my natural hair colour was.

And then came that terrible episode where I allowed my hair to become a brilliant custard yellow… a word of advice... if anybody tells you they are training to be a hairdresser - DO NOT LET THEM COLOUR YOUR HAIR! Trust me, the the word ‘training’ really means: ‘I DON’T HAVE A CLUE WHAT I AM DOING!.

I left my hair alone pretty much after that, allowing only the seasonal lightenings and darkenings that the British weather never brings.

And then one day I woke up to find that grey had become my predominant colour. It made me feel dull, my head matching the colour of my suits. For a while I cheered myself up with Just for Men although I never tried Grecian 2000 - for some reason I thought that it might make me look a little too much like Barbie’s beau, Ken.

And for a while it did make me feel a little better. But there comes a time when you have to admit defeat and simply stop trying… so I did, held up the old grey flag and surrendered.

So here I am my hair the colour of a storm cloud. Not that fantastic steel grey that you get just before a storm, nor that wonderful silver grey that appears as the storm abates, just that flat leaden nothing grey that you get on one of those horrible days when it simply rains and rains and rains and rains and rains.

Yes, I have a leaden cloud on my head where once there grew a sunny day

Oh well, at least I still have hair.