The hair of the yak

 

Everyone has their own stories of life in lockdown. Around our house it mainly focusses on “grandma school”. As the spare adult in our household, I get to teach the 7-year-old; the 12-year-old fortunately takes care of himself. Thankfully the teachers prepare well-devised learning segments because too much of what the children learn these days is unfamiliar. For instance, do any of my fellow oldies know what “turnaround facts” are? Easy, peasy … 2+3=5 and 3+2=5; wasn’t that obvious! Then there’s “Friends of Ten” and “Juicy Words” (otherwise known as adjectives). This afternoon we’re going to do Olympic work like paper plate discus and marshmallow shot-put; that should be fun. We’re also working on writing stories with adjectives, capital letters and adequate punctuation.

Another aspect of life-in-lockdown concerns the fact that hairdressers are closed. As a result of this, my fringe has grown so long that I resemble a yak. There’s something about hair which is vital to one’s appearance; if your hair looks right, then you look right – well, right-er if you know what I mean.

I had very long and very thick hair for all of my childhood. It was usually in one or two very long and very thick plaits which I couldn’t manage so I had to wait for my mother to plait my hair each morning before I did anything. Hair washing was an agonising process as this was in the days before conditioner. After the washing, my very long and very thick hair became a very large bird’s nest of knots which took at least two adults to comb and reduced me always to tears. Eventually at the age of 13 I rebelled; the only rebellion I recall in my childhood. Off the hair came, at my mother’s hairdresser. She was crying, I was crying, the hairdresser was crying and when we got home, my father was crying.

Throughout my teenage years, hair became other sorts of problems. At one point it was fashionable to have very straight hair. We addressed this in two ways. One was pinning wet hair around our heads in a spiral until it dried; the other was to iron it on the ironing board! When the fashion reversed, as fashions usually do, and I needed curly hair, I would go to bed with my hair wound round curlers held in place by very uncomfortable sticks. I once had a perm (short for permanent wave) which in my case made me look like a visitor from darkest Oblovia. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s and visited my mother’s talented hairdresser that I discovered I actually had curly hair which waved into delicious loose ringlets. I had a good hair day for a decade! In my late 40s, however, I was concerned, as I’ve said before, not to look like a geriatric Shirley Temple and reluctantly cut the ringlets off.

Of course hair is not confined to one’s head. My friends and I were deeply troubled in teenage by dark hair on our arms. The remedy was to coat the arms with a paste of peroxide and ammonia which lightened the hair when it didn’t turn it orange. Hair on our legs was easily solved by shaving which was thought of as faintly dashing. In later years waxing was the go. Hair under the arms was not talked about but dealt with in the same way as legs.

Which leaves the final hair problem – hair on the face!

Fortunately, the natural down on my cheeks was very light, which considering the darkness of all my other hair was a blessing. But the dark hair on my upper lip was a big problem. It was dealt with either by the peroxide and ammonia treatment or waxed completely off, a painful but effective solution. In later life I broke all the rules and shaved it off which was supposed to lead to it coming back thicker than ever. I can confidently assert this is not true.

And then, in Germaine Greer’s immortal words: “You know you’re getting old when your hair migrates from your legs to your chin.” I anticipate having a deep and personal relationship with a beautician to the end of my life.

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

Clarence Darrow: “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure.”