Hair Today

Hair today.

Hopefully not gone tomorrow.

Crowning glory, luscious locks, Rapunzel’s saviour, Samson’s downfall.

To cut, colour, curl and comb, to braid, cream or shave.

For fashion or political statement? Much, much more than a bunch of keratin.

And what of my own thatch, tresses, locks, Barnet Fair?

Blond, to brown, to various. Now a natural grey, silver, or…  ‘My auntie’s the one with the white hair’, a seven year old friend said recently introducing me to some of her friends.

Always thick; ‘like your dad’s’ said my mum, .‘No fear of thinning here’, the hairdressers agreed. All good. Until a couple of summers ago when first I noticed hairs on my hand when I so much as touched my previously fulsome head-full. As I said: ‘hopefully not gone tomorrow’.

I worry it’s a reaction to medication or some bodily changes as yet undiagnosed and a trip to the doctor in late 2019 and a hormone test shows nothing amiss. ‘Have you been stressed about anything lately?’ the GP asks.

Where to start! The state of it all. Climate change. Brexit. Money for wars but no pay rise for the NHS. Living in a beautiful sea-surrounding county which is yet the first or second poorest in the country (depending on which report one reads) not to mention Northern Europe. The bunch of horrors that are the, I refuse to say ‘our’, UK government. The struggle for something better whilst observing and personally experiencing attacks on the Left. As a related aside: I’ve become somewhat attracted (and addicted) to twitter in recent years and although I’ve networked, made friends with and been supported by many like-minded others, I’ve attracted a fair number of online insults too.  But before I go on, and just to say, I can categorically state that Jeremy Corbyn did not make my hair fall out. But as he’s been blamed, and door-stepped, for almost everything else, why not for my own current, personal follicle distress.

Whatever the reason, or reasons, it seems hair loss is a likely part of my life-story from now on. There are weeks when it doesn’t seem so bad and then I notice the precious grey/silver/white strands on my t-shirt or cushion and off, literally, it comes again.

My photos chart my relationship with hair, along-with my relationships with loved ones, past and present. There’s the school photo taken the day after I took the scissors to my fringe, there’s the pile of hair in the sink a month or so into the first Covid-19 lockdown when I could stand the straggle no longer.

My first wedding perm.

My blond baby locks, the various lengths, short and cut into the neck, long and flowing, pony tails and more…

The tidy, the windswept, and all in between.

Then of course there are the hair-raising experiences not captured, or not evident in a photograph at least. The two, three times, when working as a nursery nurse that I caught nits along with all the other nursery inhabitants. The reason for the first significant haircut; my plaits sticky from falling in the school custard yet again, my tears at the brushing out of tangles after a wash and dry. That bob saved my mum hours. My dad wasn’t pleased. He got over it. The political horrors I mentioned just now that literally do make me want to tear my hair out although I’m much gentler towards it, much more respectful of it, now than I once was.

It’s nearly 18 months since my last trip to ‘Cutting Edge’.

I cut my mum’s hair once and on her next trip to the saloon the woman holding the scissors this time asked somewhat reproachfully; ‘who cut your hair last?’ My daughter, said mum. ‘Your daughter’s not a hairdresser is she’, was the reply. I used to cut my late husband John’s strawberry blond (once a vibrant ginger) hair too. But I used a hair-razor to achieve his preferred No 4 (he did his beard himself) and it’s fair to say that the tool took the strain and not much skill was required. Still since that first lockdown home-cut I’m managed alone, well enough. I know I’m not a professional but it’ll do, it’s ok.

Isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

Like many women I have mixed feelings about sitting in the hairdresser’s chair. The pain in the neck whilst learning back to have your hair washed and/or the curlers or foils pulled out. The sitting for hours and hours whilst it’s permed, highlighted, full-head coloured, cut, dried, I’ve been through the whole caboodle, the ‘froofing’ as a friend recently described it. And yet, the pleasure from the pressure of the head massage, delivery by trained, powerful fingers. BLISS. Then there’s the talk. I know some don’t like the chatter but I mostly have done, especially when I’ve got to know my stylist beyond the perfunctory. I remember real care and kindness following the deaths of John and my mum and whispered shared confidences about pay and conditions in addition to the essential ‘when next are you going on holiday? / what are you doing for Christmas?’ discussion. All memories now.

There are other hair memories too. Who’d have thought, well not me until now,  that I could, that I would, chart my autobiography in this way?

One precious recollection as I near the end of my hair-story to date. The time I was out with my mum when whilst waiting for a bus together I sit on a shop step and she leans down to stroke my head, my hair. We were always physically affectionate, my Dorothy and I, remind me to tell you of her washing my back in the bath and then, before I stopped her with a laugh, her beginning to wash my face too. I was 51 at the time. So back to our bus-stop exchange (more than 20 years earlier). Mum stroking my head, my hair. I’m tired and under her soft touch I could doze off even though the step is cold and hard. That is until she stops short and with some shock in her voice exclaims; ‘goodness, you’re going grey, I must be old!’

‘Well if it keeps on falling out I’ll go for a No 2 and learn to live with it’, I told the GP the day I went to the surgery and not the saloon to discuss my hair. Part resignation, part bravado. Two years on and my head’s still covered although it’s not just because of my slightly tender left ear that I appreciate my woolly hat from early autumn through late spring. Who knows where I’ll be, what I’ll have left in five, ten, years’ time.

Hair today.

Hopefully not gone tomorrow.

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NB: I wrote this piece for a conference nearly a year ago. I'm sharing now not least because I think there might be a PART TWO to come. There's a short video of the above with more images here (376) Gayle Letherby (Session 4) HAIR TODAY - YouTube