Uneasy Lies The Head...

...that wears the crowning glory.

Oh dear, I hear you cry, what on earth is she on about now?  I can't even refer to myself in the third person any longer as Goldenoldenlady's cover has largely been blown by Google+ since she clicked on something and everything transmuted into her real-life identity.  When I comment on blogs now my actual genuine name shows, under which I registered at Google+ one dozy afternoon when I probably wasn't paying nearly enough attention to what I was signing up for at the time.

Again I digress.  I have a tendency to do that.  In my more generous moments i call it lateral thinking, only I am not entirely sure it really is proper thinking of any type.

Crowning glory = a lady's hair.  You get my drift?  In my case I have never felt that what sprouted out of my scalp was the icing on the cake.  It is plentiful and yet ultra-fine, and as straight as water running out of a tap.  Not a kink, wave or curl is there in it. 

Very little of it even now is grey, perhaps the slightest wisp of a suggestion of white at each temple, but the rest is a dark mouse - very dark ash blonde, a hairdresser might tactfully call it (if she wants to be paid), which in my book is no shade of blonde at all. 

So, ever since I was away from our mother's beady eagle eye, since I hit my twenties, I have coloured my hair in the hopes it would become something somehow more definite and eye-catching.  Which it has been, enough to grab a couple of husbands, in any case, and a few interesting romantic interludes along the way.  It's had blonde streak and highlights, it's been a cheerful golden brown, it's a been a light yet tawny auburn, a right-between-the-eyes day-old-chick buttery yellow, and (latterly) it has been a pale white blonde with hints of mother-of-pearl opalescence.

Sadly though, this last light pastel tint has needed TWO applications of quite serious percentage peroxide per month to achieve the desired silvery white and keep the darker roots at bay.  Did I mention my hair grows fast?  Well it does.  Annoyingly so.  And the nett effect of six months of these harsh treatments has been to turn my silky straight hair to frazzled hay, however much conditioner I lavish upon it.  So something had to change.  Something, even, had to go..

And that something was my hair.  This Sunday last gone I impulsively tried to give myself a home trim, and the end result was horrendous.  So the husband and I put our (in my case freshly shorn) heads together, had a large stiffening drink, and reached for his electric clippers. 

We set them at #4 (1/2" all over), which was OK, but for annoying bits of white and blonde still adhering to my skull in odd random clumps.  So down went the blade guard to #2.  Which is 1/4 " all over.  Think not skinhead, but suedehead.  Think Buddhist nun.  Think fervent 70s feminist.  Think Goldenoldenlady looking like THIS!

And now I will leave you to taken that on board.  I need a new nom de plume. Talk amongst yourselves and see what you can come up with, OK?  By the way, I LOVE it, especially in the hot weather we had earlier this week.  For the first time since I was 49 and prescribed Tamoxifen after breast cancer surgery seven years ago I have not sweated and dripped all round my neck and chest when sitting in a warm room or lying in bed at night.  I feel cool and unencumbered, so much so my new and startling appearance truly doesn't bother me.

And anyway, I have hats for when I go out, so I don't scare the horses!