Hair Today...

I've tried to put up with the dark ash blonde colour. I've tried to offer it up too. But it's really ghastly.

Fr. Tim has tried to be kind. I suspect he saw my cri de coeur on the blog and decided that it was more than his life was worth to comment. But if the colour was really ok, I'm sure he'd have said so. Instead, when I mentioned my dissatisfaction with the result of my last fiasco, he gave the priestly equivalent of a politician's "no comment!" - namely, a shrug of the shoulders and "I really wouldn't know about that sort of thing..."

I do not have time to go to the hairdresser. Tomorrow afternoon, I am off to the Faith Summer Session at Woldingham. For a week. And then I'm helping on the Faith Summer Break at Woldingham. For a week.

I'm not sure I can stand a whole two weeks of being dark ash blonde.

I have some pre-lightener, which should strip off the ash blonde colour. I can then apply a light blonde colour instead. That's the theory...

The reason I haven't done it already is a simple one: I've had some very bad experiences with hair dye. This makes me a little cautious. Kasia has described her hair disasters, but I think I can trump that...

My worst experience was about 7 years ago. I saw a new hair dye preparation which was advertised as an on-off product... it was permanent, but you could remove it with a special chemical when you'd had enough of it.

I suddenly developed the urge to go aubergine.

How the hell do I know why I wanted to go aubergine?

I went aubergine on Saturday evening. By Sunday morning I hated it. I used the chemical "off" switch. It didn't remove all of the aubergine... I was left with a few pinkish tones...

By Sunday afternoon, I had unearthed a packet of my usual ash blonde colour. I decided to apply this in the hopes that it would cover the slight pink tinge.

It didn't.

Instead, my hair went a rather horrible shade of brown. It looked, to me, like a bad case of diarrhoea. I phoned up a good friend, and poured out my woes. Like all good friends, she tried to reassure me. "Don't panic," she soothed, as I was describing how death was preferable to having to go in to teach while my hair was in such a mess (girls can be awfully bitchy!) By this time it was Sunday evening.

"I'm sure that your hair can't really be that bad... it just looks that way to you, the same way that you think a spot stands out a mile when no-one else can see it..."

I protested that my hair really was a mess. So she suggested that I come round for her to give her honest opinion. "If the worst comes to the worst," she said, "there's an all-night chemist near me, and we can figure out what to do."

I drove round to Angela's house and rang the bell. As she opened the door, her smile of greeting faded.

"I'll get my coat."

So, at 10pm, we went to the chemist to see what hair dye options were available. A pre-lightener and a blonde shade were selected. We then went back to Angela's house. I applied the pre-lightener.

To my horror, the hair went a vivid orange colour. Definitely carrotty. Angela declared that she liked it, but as she also had bright orange paint on her walls, I decided that she was biased.

The blonde shade was then applied. The end result was a mousey-blonde. Mousey-blonde with pink, brown and orange patches. I didn't like it, but it was better than either the aubergine-red, the shitty brown or the carrotty-orange.

By the end of the week, I went to a hairdresser and begged him to put it right. It took six months before the last patches of pink tone finally disappeared.

Hmmmmm. Maybe I need to think this through again...

We've got Mass tomorrow at 7am. I'll see how I feel after that...