BAD HAIR DAY

It’s Sunday morning. My slightly grumpy chum has been staying with us for a few days after her latest bust-up with her boyfriend. I knew that it was going to be a bad day when she looked at me as I came downstairs (after spending an hour on my locks) and announced:

‘Your hair, it looks like a wig.’

Now I don’t have what you’d call wash and go hair. It takes a great deal of conditioner, mousse, stretching and teasing to get it looking anything like decent; so at this stage I’m still hoping she’s complimenting me. I shake my head and say, ‘I have been using these new rollers to give it some body.’

‘No’ she corrected ‘I mean it looks so dull and lifeless.’

These words of wisdom are from the same woman who told me during a discussion about designer copies from Thailand that ‘they only do my size, not your size…big!’ Could this be an omen I wonder?

Next thing I hear is banshee-like wailing and moaning from upstairs: Billie has awoken. I rush to assure her that she had not been abandoned, only to see the most tousled-haired little poppet all crease-faced and tearstained teetering at the top of the stairs. Billie’s having a bad hair day too. ‘Mummeeeee’. Olly has emerged rubbing his eyes. I don’t know where the hedge was, but by the looks of things, Olly’s hair had been dragged through it, over it and under it.  Bad Hair Hatrick in Hertfordshire screams the headline in my head. Action is required. 

Billie, frankly, is a no-hoper seeing as you’d be being kind if you said her hair was downy. She just doesn’t have that much yet. Olly on the other hand gives a good impression of a mop. I’m partly to blame because I like to see boys with long hair, but there is another part of that equation. Samson and Delilah look like Happy Hour at the Hairdressers compared to what it’s like when I proffer the scissors in the direct of Olly’s barnet. But I’m gonna have to give it a go.

He sees me bring out the hairdressing bag. ‘No! No! He yells you can’t cut my whiskers’ and he’s gone, charging off into our bedroom armed with the hoover pipe to ward me off. So begins the bargaining and the deal is finally struck at this: 

He will let me cut his ‘whiskers’ if I:

a) Stick them back on afterwards

b) Do it while we’re watching Scooby Doo

c) Let him take all of his clothes off and wear the black silky cape he’s clutching

d) Allow him to cut the rocking horse’s hair off afterwards

Guess what? I agree. Trying to remember everything I’ve failed to observe whenever I visit the hairdresser’s I grab his fringe. He remains calm. I start cutting. He says, ‘this will help me see mummy won’t it?’ I murmur assent and continue to cut. He lurches forward ‘look a ghost!’ he yells pointing at the TV. ‘Let mummy carry on cutting’ I say as calmly as possible, but the moment has gone. He wriggles and squirms and hops and shuffles, and ends up with a rather jaunty, slanting fringe and a passable pageboy style cut all round. 

The horse fares much worse and soon the hall carpet is covered in Olly’s blond and the horse’s black hair. As I’m trying to shake the hair off Olly’s cape my mate comes up the stairs. ‘My blouse!’ she shrieks. She’s not best pleased. ‘Bad Hair Day’ I explain. Well she started it.

Quote of the Week

Olly to Steve when Billie was cross with him: "Daddy, I know that Billie doesn't like you, but I do and I think Mummy does too." 

Juliet Jones lives in domestic chaos with husband Steve, son Oliver (aged 3) and daughter Billie (aged 2) in Hertfordshire.