This is a post about DIY hair hacking from a few years ago. I re-read it as a warning to myself as I contemplate shelling out for a pro hairdresser...  |
| Me about ten years ago - when did you wed Robbie? At my brother's wedding. The last time I had long, natural, rather than luridly coloured hair. |
I have been wearing
my hair scrunched into something resembling a knot (a not?) for some time now.
Mostly because with the terrific-ten-week-old, the tremendous-two-year-old and
the teenage-cash-demander-stand-up comedian there is not much me time, never mind
‘hair-time,’ left. I exist in a vortex of activity in which ‘me’ doesn’t often
come out - except via the occasional shout. Today I decided that I needed a
sea-change and it was my hair that was going to make waves.
Brandishing my
bluntish hairdressing scissors; the ones that have attacked the locks of my
fifteen-year-old for years, and latterly my trusting husband and a few brave
(drunk?) friends, I set to. The only thing sharp about my scissors have been my
words to my son hovering above them like blades Just lift your chin off your chest
before I cut off your ear. Yes, I transform into a Van Goughian madwoman
when the subject is my son and my canvas is his hair. Anyway, I stood in front
of my bathroom mirror in the gloom (the light obscured by the hanging – yes it
looked dead – washing that dried three days ago). First of all I layered the
sides. I could still see at this stage. Then the thought occurred to me that I
might try layering the back. It was like playing blind-man’s-bluff with my hair
as the opponent, as I groped around the back of my head, pulling up layers and
hacking away. Before long (there was short) I was in the bluff. Scissor-happy, I liked what
I saw – at this stage my hair had gone from long and lank to mid-length and
nicely layered.
My two-year-old,
who was taking full advantage of my distraction by emptying ‘things’ into the
bathtub and over the floor, said that I looked ‘gorgeous’ and that she ‘liked
it,’ I think she may have been ‘liking’ my ignoring her activities with the perfume
bottle, canny kid that she is. This tick should have been my cue that the
session was over, but the scissors were hot in my hands and I thought I could
‘style’ it some more. Pause for a moment (as I should have) and imagine a sped
up film of a person cutting their own hair. This was to become my mode in the
minutes that followed as I lost all sense of time and proportion. Soon I had
cut a wedge from the right-hand side that had to be paid for by the left and so
it went on for some time like a bizarre hair politics show, until eventually my
daughter who prefers to play than eat demanded lunch. My hair, like a novel, or
rather now, a short story, was forced into conclusion by events outside my
control, which was just as well, otherwise I may have continued cutting,
cutting, cutting, shaping, shaping, shaping until someone said stop.
*Happily that novel has now shifted over two thousand copies - all word of mouth too, apart from some good reviews/press early on - yes, I know I am mouthy and a bit trumpet-blowy. But not bad for a girl who ditched (nicely, she was lovely) her agent and the publishing industry (when they asked her to change the ending) to go it alone...I have to remind myself about previous successes when I feel a bit down that the current one is not finished yet...
