I can’t put off the dirty deed for much longer.
Boris’s bumblings this week about lifting lockdown have confirmed my worst suspicions.
He said one thing, his cabinet colleagues said another.
None of them has a scooby about the safest way ahead.
But the PM did happen to mention hairdressers wouldn’t be open until July.
Factor in oor rightly cautious Nicola (don’t you think her heidie could do with a few highlights, or streaks, as I still ca’ them?) and Scotland’s salons might not up be and blow-drying until August.
Panic, panic, panic. By that time, taking in projected length and tintless hue, I’ll be the dead spit of one of the three witches in Macbeth.
And I’ve two mates who claim they could complete the coven.
Nothing for it but hit the dye-pot.
On to Amazon. Couldn’t believe trusty old Nice’n Easy was still on the go. I went for medium honey blonde.
Getting it Saturday, ready to lather it on to my white badger lines on Sunday.
Think I’ll phone my hairdresser first for a few tips.
Like how do I get my frozen shoulder to raise my hand to the top of my napper? No wonder I’m nervous.
Yesterday one of my neighbours phoned to explain why she hadn’t been waving from her window this week, as per usual during my roon-the-blocks.
Turns oot she’d ladled on some make of medium auburn last weekend and now wouldn’t even dare pop her unfortunate heidie onywye near the window.
“So what colour is your hair?” asks I, understandably alarmed.
Pause. Sez she, admittedly now laughing: “Have you ever had a tikka masala curry?”
We all experimented with whatever shades Woollies offered in our teens, most memorably when my daring pal Jenny turned up in her High School uniform complete with bright orange, deep-fringed mop. Sort of punk star Toyah Willcox 20 years before punk had been invented.
Unlike the teachers (and her mother), we loved it.
But it took two hours in Marlow’s (and I suspect a pucklie shillings) to tone it doon to an acceptable marmalade.
I’d to take to dipping into the dye-pot in my twenties when long, white hairs began appearing in my brown locks, dad cheering me up no end by recalling his mother’s hair was “white as a sheet” before she was 30. Gee, thanks for that.
But the clarty clutter of it all every six weeks or so was such a faff.
And we look so truly awful during the process.
If only I could bury the memory of that Sunday evening in the summer of 1968.
I’d been going out with this likely laddo for a pucklie weeks. Spik aboot a trap.
Alan somebody. A’body funcied him. And his ain car!
We’d been to Codona’s on the Saturday, but when he asked me out the next night, I said I couldn’t go because I’d to wash my hair.
Absolutely true – I was also adding a sexy new tint.
Dis-as-ter. Did the silly sod nae come to the door that evening to return the sunglasses I’d left in his car.
Me standin’ there in my “specially for the dye-pot” ancient, splattered dressing goonie.
No towel ower my heidie because the potion was only mid-set.
So I’d to expose this dark-brown pyramid on my napper, phizog splodged with Winsome Walnut doon the forehead and roon the lugs.
The surprised, to say the least, loon, reacted like he’d just seen the Creature From The Black Lagoon; sort of louped back and put a hand ower his eyes.
Was that a kind gesture to protect my modesty? Or was he just afeart by the affa sight?
I’ll never know. But I can guess.
This article originally appeared on the Evening Express website. For more information, read about our new combined website.
