During the first Lockdown, just like most of the women in the country, I bemoaned the closing of the hair salons, wondered when it would be safe enough for them to reopen and thought about how I could hide the steadily emerging line of white/silver that denoted my natural hair line. I liberally coated my emerging greys with touch up powder or spray…..and then spent my days, disliking the sticky texture and itchy sensation, these products created.
Looking back I feel slightly ashamed of myself for worrying about such trivialities when all around the world, tens of thousands of people were losing their battle against COVID, but, like all disasters, it is easy to distance yourself from a situation that, barring the restrictions that we all found ourselves living under, hasn’t directly affected you or your immediate family. That said, being in a world where a virus was rampaging through every country, trying for some level of normality, some control, no matter how insignificant the subject matter, was oft times the only thing keeping many people sane.
It was towards the end of 2020 that my stylist and I began to have discussions about the possibility of my fading out my dark brown colour and slowly making the transition to my natural white/silver colour, in the new year. The emphasis being on the words ‘fading’ and ‘slowly’.
But of course the new year brought with it another Lockdown and all non-essential shops and business, once again and quite rightly, shut their doors. It struck me that just as with the first Lockdown, the second one happened just a couple of weeks before my next hair appointment and I began to feel as if someone was trying to drop me a not so subtle hint….a hint that maybe now was the time to leave behind the fakery of the person I was and embrace who I actually am.
About this time, I noticed that a quite large swelling that had been present on the top of my scalp for several years, had begun to shrink and with each passing day, was getting progressively smaller, eventually fading away to nothing. I pondered this development and came to the conclusion that the swelling had, in fact, been a reaction to the home colour kits and more recently the salon colours, that had been used on my hair over the years.
My hair grows quickly and is very, very thick and by the time my stylist messaged me to rebook my appointment following the reopening of non-essential shops and businesses, I had a 3 inch wide white stripe where my parting was and 1.5 inches of growth along…..well every strand of hair to be honest. I decided at that point to shelve the ‘fading’ and ‘slowly’ plan and go with the flow. I had already stopped covering the grey up – it was taking far too long on a morning and required copious quantities of product to achieve the solid brown look – so the people I was seeing in my every day life, had already begun to get accustomed to my new ‘look’.
So today I went for my appointment and by this time I was definitely beyond the ‘shaggy dog’ look, resembling something closer to one of the old Hags muttering ‘Double, double toil and trouble’ around a bubbling cauldron. My stylist looked genuinely shocked by the sight of my wild looking coiffure but she set to, worked her magic and just over an hour later I emerged with a much sleeker look and was absolutely delighted with the finished effect.
You can see from the pictures of the side and back, that there is still some of the brown left to be cut out next time but at least now it looks like it is intentionally this way, rather than being the dregs of December’s colour. I think that the fact that there is still some brown left will help me acclimatise to my colour change and by the time the last of the colour is cut out, I will be happy to finally welcome the properly natural me.
The Land Rover Owners Ex Wife 