Not the hairdressers

I have to colour my hair. This is horrible. The upstairs sink will look like a bloodbath. It'll remind me of how my mother could gut fish. There is nothing worse than colouring your own hair at home. Except having to go swimming on Wednesdays, which is possibly the worst thing of all.

I gave up going to the hairdressers about three years ago. I had such a miserable set of experiences I wondered why on earth I was paying £80 a time to have them.

First I gave up going to the hairdressers that I'd been going to since 1984 when I had my hair accidentally dyed orange. The cut was great. I looked like a fan member for the Thompson Twins. It was just the colour that was orange. Typical. Go to a trendy hairdressers and they don't turn the lights on, except the red and neon ones, and then, in the semi-darkness and under the flashing neon lights that read 'Get It On', they ask you to pick a hair colour. It wasn't until I got into daylight that I actually saw what colour I'd got on. That was the end of the 'going to the trendy hairdresser' stage.

The next hairdresser had my custom on and off for 20 years. Well now it's definitely off. They got so used to me appearing every six months with my hair looking like I'd been electrocuted again, that the stylists never bothered to ask about cut, colour, or whether I'd got anything special to do that weekend. The last time I showed up, my 'personal stylist' sat reading 'Hello!' magazine when I came in and, without bothering to look up, said 'Same again?' During the miserable process of having the same again hair colour applied she then thrust a copy of 'Period Living' at me, making me feel a bit like a fifteenth century ruin. And that was the end of that.

Next I found a place in town, which seemed promising. Until the incident with the fire brigade. Now there is nothing quite as humiliating as standing for 45 minutes on the pavement in the centre of town and in the middle of the day, wrapped in plastic bags while red hair dye dribbles down your face. In that case my 'personal stylist' was chain-smoking her way through a packet of twenty, complaining the bloody kettle was always setting off the bloody fire alarms but how she might do it deliberately next time because the firemen were bloody fit. Oh did that experience make me feel like a lady. And they still charged the full £80 for it.

So I decided to go it alone. Superdrug do a bottle for £2.59 and sometimes two for a fiver. And I've put if off as long as possible. Well it's no use putting it off any longer. The six months are up, and I'm going with Dig to the Posh Do on Thursday night. So it's time to colour hair and gut fish.

Wish me luck.