When I wanted my hair cut like Jamie Lee Curtis or Judi Dench, it turned out like…

I exited the small hairdressing salon in an at-least-not-enraged frame of mind. For me this is good: it means I am not thinking of dropping a Molotov cocktail through the doorway because of the cut I’ve just been given.

I have no idea why it’s so hard to cut my hair. I may be old beyond comprehension, but my hair remains thick (albeit with not a whole lot of pigment where it used to be very dark brown) and only tending too wavy when it gets long-ish. And I don’t go in to any salon and just sit there with my mouth hanging open, or anything: I always have a clear message to bring.

I say (in varying order – I don’t have it off by heart!) that I want:

• Short on the sides
• A bit longer on the top and ‘corners’
• Try to do something – anything! – About my double crown to make it sit down (and shut up!)
• A sort of parting to the right of centre
• StarTrek points on the temples (they always get it!)
• AND DON’T DO ANYTHING FANCY PLEASE!!!

This last is because I’m one of those hopeless women who has never in her entire life been able to set/arrange/do … whatever is the correct word … her hair. This is why I’m now wearing it as short as – oh, say Jamie Lee Curtis? Judi Dench? And in fact, those cuts are more or less exactly what I’ve been trying to have someone give me for the last couple of years. Sigh… I suspect the Dame’s requires daily attention, however, Jamie’s looks like a really excellent cut that just sits right all the time.

I have been known to take photos like these into salons with me (I’m not proud); but it makes no difference. I never get a cut that looks remotely like either of them.

ANYWAY…

There I was, not enraged but far from ecstatic, and wondering how I would be able to afford to have it re-cut every 6 weeks. As it happened, the topic has not yet arisen …

A fortnight later I wandered into my local Coles and came across my mate Debbie on one of the tills, looking good around the head. Nothing like Jamie or Judi: her hair had quite obviously been got at with clippers, a sort of Ivy League cut, like George Eads from CSI, only not anything like as musclebound! And she looked absolutely terrific, as I wasted no time in telling her.

She related how she’d had it done ‘the other day’ for charity. Several of the Coles female staff had had buzz-cuts to raise money for a breast cancer concern when it turned out that one of them was a semi-professional with the clippers. My little eyes swivelled to and fro, but Ros the clipperer was not on duty that day; so I told Debbie to pass on that I would like her to do the clippering to me, too, and would pay her a nominal sum. I had, after all, very recently coughed up a far from nominal one for a proper cut… Could she come up to my place (a block from Coles)? No worries.

It proved a bit tricky pinning Ros down, but eventually Debbie told me that the two of them would arrive chez moi on Thursday evening, and Bob would be my uncle.

Are you asking yourselves why I decided to do this? You should be. It was because of my lack of ecstatic joy at all cuts for the previous 5,000 years (approx.) and also because I decided that if I had it taken off down to the same level as Debbie’s, it would grow outwards at the one speed, and get to all one length at the same time.

So I got out Stringer’s stool and sat on it in the kitchen so that the cut hair would be easy to sweep up. Ros opened up her luggage and extracted a voluminous plastic cape, press-studding it around me. Debbie took up an overseer’s position in front of me and prepared to give witness…

Ros, having picked up the clippers, took off an almighty swathe and Debbie laughingly said “Too late now, M.R.!” Having successfully survived that first hideous swipe from my scalp and that all it entailed emotionally, I made myself more comfortable on the stool and gave myself up to Fate.

Debbie was telling some anecdote or other, which led to her needing to remember precisely when she’d had Ros clipper here, she furrowed her (hairless) brow in thought while counting days on her fingers. I thought, but it turned out it was WEEKS! – And then announced triumphantly:

“Oh yes – it would’ve been six weeks ago.”

A sudden silence fell upon the assembly as the trio were all struck by… something. In my case, it can only be said to have been SHORTNESS, if you get my drift.

Debbie had Ros give her a number 1 six weeks ago; and what I liked about her ‘haircut’ was that old …

OMG …

Eventually I shrugged, causing a great deal of shortish grey/dark hair to cascade onto the kitchen lino tiles. I looked down at it musingly, wondering what length it would have been if Ros had been giving me a… what? Number 4? 5? How high do clippers go?! Anyway, whatever it would’ve taken to give me a clippering that looked as Debbie’s did then.

In the end, you know, it’s been an interesting journey. As I look back on the 8 selfies I took with my webcam over the last 8 weeks, I am still not looking like Debbie in terms of my hair’s length! I have decided that it was at the end of the very first week that I liked it best! Now, after eight weeks, it’s showing how square my face is, and that BLOODY double crown is behaving appallingly, dammit! It stands up, it waves to everyone, it turns this way and that, and waves a bit more… I have never seen anyone else who has the trouble with her double crown as I do with mine. The hair at the temples puffs up and makes me look like a hard-boiled egg.

And I don’t think Ros is actually a cutter, you know? – Just someone who can pass the clippers over your head nice and evenly.

So now the bloody search is on yet again. Woe is me.