Bad Hair Day

“Some of the worst mistakes in my life were haircuts”
― Jim Morrison

 

 

If His Nibs finds out how much I spent on my hair last week, he’ll kill me.

He won’t mean to of course, but he’ll give out so much that the tedium will make me lose my will to live and I’ll eventually slump lifeless to the floor.

It all started when I read a piece about some new magical hairbrush that makes you look like you’ve had a professional blow dry. 

Apparently, I'd just put batteries in the handle and the brush would heat up and a simple sweep across the locks would transform my usual mess into a glossy, smooth mane.

My hair is one of the banes of my life.  It has neither the manners to be straight nor the courage to be curly.  Or even wavy.  It’s thick and heavy and shapeless, no matter what I do with it.  And I spend half my life trying to dye it any colour except its natural snow white.

His Nibs reckons I should stop moaning and either just let it grow white and mental, or shave it off altogether.  Not helpful.

I’m not so old that I can accept white hair.  It’s not time yet.

And I have a head that without hair would look even more like a slightly deflated football. 
There’s no question of shaving it off.  Or of just getting it cut short.  I've made that mistake once, and once is enough.

I’m a marketer’s dream.  Or, if you will, a complete gobshite.

If I saw an ad that said, for example,

"Save Time!  Forget Tangles! Our expensive piece of crap will give you hair like

Miranda Kerr's in eight seconds flat!"

The intelligent part of my brain would obviously think "yeah, right, like there's anyone or anything in the world that could make me look like I had Miranda Kerr's hair, other than a wig actually made of her hair".
The less intelligent part, however, would niggle and torment me and wake me up at nights with thoughts of "What if?"

So this magic hairbrush was tormenting me slightly.  Every time I fought with my hair for some days, I thought of how much easier my life would be if I had the magic brush.

Of course it’s sold out everywhere.  You can’t get one for love or money.

On Friday evening, I was finished work and had half an hour to myself before I had to collect His Nibs.

I decided to go into the nearest department store to check out the new summer shoes.  I like to buy a couple of pairs at the start of every summer, and wear them to death, throwing them out in September. 

This enables me to prolong the life of my more expensive, more comfortable, and harder wearing summer shoes, simply by leaving them on the little shoe rack under the stairs all year round, and completely ignoring them.

Not a particularly intelligent idea, but not to worry.

They didn’t have any shoes I liked, unusually enough.  Probably for the best.  It’s not summer yet, and if I bought shoes now I’d probably have gone off them when it’s actually time to wear them.

I decided to go and collect His Nibs, and stop causing trouble. 

Sad to say, on my way out of the shop I noticed the hair styling tools section. 

My first thought was

“I’ve decided not to buy that brush, but I’ll look and see if they have it.  Just because I’m curious.”

I had decided not to buy the brush because it is a normal square brush.  What I really want is to be able to blow dry my hair with a round brush like the hairdresser does.

Little did I know that the shop had a round brush, a hybrid of hairbrush and hairdryer, which blows hot air out and dries your hair as you brush it.

How could I resist, in all fairness?  Who could resist the promise of having blow dry looking hair every day?

Not me.  I bought it.  And I was so absolutely confident that all my hair worries were over, that I even bought a tiny handbag sized hair straighteners to go with it.  The miniscule device would suffice for the little bits of hair that might, unlikely as it seemed, not do exactly as I wished.

I was quite excited when I washed my hair that first night.  I couldn’t wait to give myself the lovely hair my hairdresser had bestowed on me a couple of weeks before.

I’m such a complete eejit.

It was handier, I suppose, than blowdrying and then straightening.  The trouble is, I don’t have very long hair.  Hardly even jaw length.

And in an effort to simplify things, Tara the hairdresser recently cut it into short layers, to make it more manageable, and less heavy.

This blowing round hairbrush worked fine on some parts of it, but other bits were just too short to go around the barrel of the brush.

I didn’t look fabulous after my maiden voyage into the hot brush world.  I looked very much like I usually do.  The only improvement was that I no longer had the square looking layers the ghd often gives me.

So what did I do?  Did I throw the brush in the corner and lament the loss of more money? No.

I made my way back into the shop and bought another, smaller hot brush to deal with the short bits of hair. 

This smaller brush doesn't blow out hot air.  It just heats up, and you brush your hair with it. 
I suppose the fact that it was simply called a hot brush should have alerted me to the fact.  It made no difference whatsoever to my hair.
I was lamenting all this to a dear friend, and explaining that my ghd, now as old as the hills, and bought when I had very long (and naturally dark) hair is no longer sufficient for my needs.
Wearing my hair long didn't make it any less frizzy or mental, and so when I was buying it, I bought the wide one, suitable for afro hair.

Because of my now layered style, this ghd is practically useless.  My friend informed me she had the exact opposite problem.  Her small ghd is now too narrow for her long hair.  So we swapped.
And all is well.

 

Or as well as can be expected.  I'm never going to have lovely hair, I accept that now.  But the narrow ghd does as much as anything could to make it decent looking.

The two new hot brushes and the teeny straighteners, none of which were free, I may tell you, will now spend their futures hidden under the bed in an effort not to drive poor His Nibs to distraction.

The worst part of it is that no matter what I do or spend or try, my hair will grow snow white forever more.

I don’t know why I bother.