How to colour hair the easy way!

1. Come to the ill-founded conviction that a crumpled face will surely be rejuvenated ten years by colouring the grey hair sprouting from the top.

2. Read all hair-related horror stories, avidly, for months. Absorb the terror of each one, slowly.

I coloured my hair and died. My mother coloured her hair and she died. Hair colouring ate my face. Superhaircolour says they are sorry after face-death misery left children motherless.

3. Peer nervously into all retail outlets selling hair colour. Think, When I am desperate and going slightly mental, so maybe death will no longer matter, I will buy Colour My Hair the Silky Easy Way.

4. Stare enviously at other women. But they have coloured their hair! They are STILL ALIVE.

5. Reach a point on a Monday morning when life or death doesn't matter. Impulsively run out to buy Colour My Hair the Silky Easy Way.

6. Stare at box fearfully. It is a box of certain death. 200 sleeping tablets and a bottle of Whisky would be easier.

7. After six weeks, tentatively open box. Learn instructions by rote.

8. Ignore box for another two weeks. Plenty of time to prevaricate! Pray grey hair turns brown without assistance, and that crumpled face magically becomes age 20 again! Try and delude self with, I am so busy! I haven't had a moment!

9. Pluck up courage for skin allergy test. Dab fluid, awkwardly, on inside of elbow. (Rats, now I have to wear long sleeves because otherwise it looks like one of the children thumped me.)

10. Stare in horror as chemical foams on skin. Expect to die now in a severe allergic reaction. Grab children in terror. Scare them by whispering, slightly hysterically, Mummy loves you. You know, don't you? Feel the urge to confess. And it was me who ate the stash of chocolate Squirrel hid behind the bread bin.

11. Within 24 hours, forget about the patch test and wash arm. It is a shower! Who can wash with one arm sticking out the door?

12. Try the patch test again. This time, wash with one arm sticking out the door.

13. Decide it is impossible to prevent water dribbling between armpit and elbow. Stop to plan and think logically:

i. Colour hair when hairdressers are open. Thus, when severe allergic reaction kicks in, there is time to run screaming to them for an antidote.
ii. Colour hair not at rush hour, when A&E is accessible.
iii. Colour hair when another responsible adult is at home to call ambulance, lift body out of shower, assist medical staff in lowering corpse from window, console children, etc.

14. Decide on a day.

15. The day arrives. Drink a large glass of wine. It no longer matters that it is 9am.

16. Don plastic gloves and feel this course of action is as foolhardy as surgically removing your own liver.

17. Follow instructions sheet to the letter. Panic each time fluid touches scalp. Wait continuously for severe allergic reaction.

18. While waiting the 20 minutes development time, write Last Will and Testament. Sob a little in self-pity that life has come to this. A bottle of foaming fluid in a bathroom.

19. Emerge three hours later, having obsessively examined scalp from every angle, tugged at hair to feel if it is coming out, scrutinised arm for signs of severe allergic reaction.

20. Announce presence to dear husband and ask, How is my hair? Am I 20 years younger? Husband scrutinises head, as if looking for fleas, then says, Look round the back. You have missed a clump.

Oh no! It's our local hairdresser!

How do I know?

1. They are deluded. Advertising themselves as Celebrity Stylists when they are in a back street of a small town. The only close shave they made to fame is making everyone round here walk with the same mullet. It looks like a regional crime wave.

2. They dress like streetwalkers. Black string vest, white bra, fake tan, and plastic glitter belt 50p from the market. It's not a good look on a woman aged 58. It's not a good look on anyone. Possibly an LA starlet, because the look can carry a gutter. But when it walks you to the cash till? Seriously, you feel you got robbed by a hooker.

3. They act like society needs them. This is piteous, really. So let us help make them special. Turn up late for your appointment. They love it. Now they have the chance to be important! (Guide to being important? Rap six-inch multicoloured painted fingernails on formica desk while murmuring mmmmmm. Flick hair while clicking pointlessly on a mouse and looking vacantly at blank computer screen.)

4. The stylists are particularly dim. Especially Beryl. (Stage name: Berillia.) She has one GNVQ level 96 in Hair and Beauty. I do not knock it. She is happy with this level of achievement. Even if it is a bit like thinking a Big Mac is a qualification in Nutrition.

5. They don't speak in joined-up words. Don't get me wrong. I'm not looking for Socratic philosophy from my hairdresser! Of course not! Not even long chained utterances! That would blow their fuses. Round here we listen to yeah... yeah... yeah... gonna... hmm... yeah... like... like... yeah. Could explain why Melvyn Bragg's not your customer, ladies.

6. They sound like they don't know what they're doing. Have they ever done this hair cutting thing before? I swear, here's the exchange I overheard.

Customer (C). Berillia (B).
C: I'd like it a bit more fashionable than it is now.
B: Yeah... yeah... yeah. Um... Um... Right... Yeah.
Doesn't exactly inspire confidence, does it?

7. They are high on aerosol. They spray enough of that ozone-killing junk into the room, it makes your hair want to crawl out of your scalp in submission, lay on your lap and scream. Not only are their brains affected by that PCP crap; it also makes them witter on about boyfriends in high-pitched squeaky voices. After half an hour you start to hallucinate along with them and imagine you are surrounded by millions of garroted mice dressed like hookers. And they are all waving scissors, dangerously.

8. They make a big thing out of the hierarchy. The Receptionist can only take your coat and walk you over to the Junior Shampooist. She will pass you on to the Deputy Senior Stylist. She will make a big play about consulting with the Queen of the Blower. This is all a cover. It's just a pretence to make it look like there was some training so they can justify the hundred quid they're about to rip out your bank account.

9. They speak to you like you are aged five. And a slow learner. Maybe they should offer balloons for everyone to hold. Oh, and by the way, everything is a personal favour. Just for her. So, Can you, um, sit, sit, yeah, straight? Like, yeah, JUST FOR ME? What is the matter with them? Are they high? (See 7.)

10. They have made-up names. Example: Raquelia and Sextuginia. (Really, they are called Janice and Sandra.) This is not to suggest they are airheadedbimbos useful for sex. No. Of course not. They are trying to make themselves sound exotic and interesting. When they have travelled as far as Butlins and have a boyfriend who owns a pitbull.

Good grief, did I already reach ten? I'm only warming up. I could go on. Ladies, I meant it when I said I would never bring my children to this salon again. EVER.

I wish I had conversations like this everyday

I take a day off today from persecuting my own home educated gritlets and I try it with someone else's child on a school visit instead. I meet Marcie. Age 6, in Bewilderwood, Norfolk.

Bewilderwood* is a giant playground in a wood, supposedly inhabited by small and wild green goblin creatures like crocklebogs with spikes coming out their heads, pointed ears and frog faced grins.

While Squirrel, Tiger and Shark swing about in trees, I collapse my ancient arse and lungs on a piece of wood shaped like a snake, and up comes Marcie. She stands in front of me, puts her hands on her hips and looks at me defiantly, through suspicious narrowed eyes, like I am someone about whom she might yet scream POLICE! if it suits her. And we have the following conversation.

M: Who are you?
G: I'm a boggle, in disguise.
M: Really?
G: Yes.
M: You don't look like a boggle.
G: That's because I'm in disguise.
M: Why are you in disguise?
G: Boggles like me put on human disguise so we can come here and sit on this bench.
M: You are not a boggle.
G: Yes I am.
M: Not.
G: Am.
M: Not.
G: Am.
M: Not.
G: Am.
M: Well you don't look like a boggle to me. Except for the hair.


* Go, but don't go in the school holidays when it will be standing room only.

Listerine and vinegar

I am getting bells to put round our necks. Because today, when the laundry, the chaos, the upset, the rain, is all not quite enough, we discover head lice. There they are, dancing about in Tiger's hair. In fact I am such a partying mother myself I do not even know we have guests until these lice start jumping out of Tiger's head at bathtime, shouting Hey! Look at me! I can do a double backflip into the swimming tub using this hair as a springboard!

When these vile little creatures start coming out of Tiger's hair at bathtime I am dumbfounded. I am speechless. At first I cannot believe what I am seeing. What has my daughter done with her head? Did she stick it down a rabbit hole? Did she walk through treetops and get caught up in a nest of things? What did she do? And then we realise. These must be what lice look like. And she does not even know these things are here. Jumping up screaming from the bathside, pointing in horror into the tub she's sitting in, is not exactly going to make her feel good about this moment. So instead I try the calm approach. I shriek to Squirrel and Shark, Get daddy! which I agree is responding a bit like someone just entered the front door swinging a machete, and not much better than shouting Oh My God We Are All Doomed!

Now, instead of the cosy, comfortable hour I expected after bathtime, supping red wine and reading blogs, I am scouring every internet mention of headlice ever made. I resolve upon a Listerine and Vinegar method first of all. And combing, combing, combing.

Oh dear

A small moment of Shark philosophy, appropriate on the day mummy Grit finds some tangled curls on the stairs from the bathroom:

The worse thing about cutting your own hair is that people keep asking, "Have you been cutting your own hair?"

Grey hair

It's no good. It's that time again.

When it's over, all I can say is that if this is the tawny bronze, thank goodness I didn't go for the chestnut.

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.