The Hair on our Heads

We all have it - at least we all had it. I do not know anyone who is happy with their hair. If it's straight, the owner would kill for curls. If it's curly then only poker straight will do. Ever the way. Other man's grass.

Because we have hair, a massive multi-billion dollar industry has developed. Shampoo, conditioners, gells, serums, mousses, masks, hairsprays, anti- frizz products, dyes of every possible colour and more - all exist essentially so that you can change what nature has given you.

From the age of 16 I have been dying my hair. My natural colour is medium brown. Sadly now, medium brown with plenty of grey.  I began my hair dying career with an enticing package called Hint of a Tint. Because at the age of 16 I knew everything, including how long I should keep the purple mixture on my hair,  I decided that ten minutes was not enough, as stated on the instructions, and that half an hour was really what they had intended to say.  It was a mistake. My hair was the colour of cherries. That would not have been so bad for a 16 year old today, where any colour goes and we are so used to seeing rainbow colours, but this was a few decades prior to contemporary teenagers, so I had to shampoo my hair many times, many times. My forehead was purple as were my temples. Hint of a Tint. Not so much a hint as a definite instruction.

Next came Harmony. I believe this one was a permanent hair dye, unlike Hint of a Tint. Again, I knew best. Now though I was at university and even then, in the late seventies ideas about hair colour were becoming liberated. I ended up with an intense mahogany colour, which I really liked. It was probably my favourite ever hair colour, and I have known a few.

For a while I dispensed with hair dye and my colour changer of choice became peroxide - neat peroxide applied with a ball of cotton wool directly onto my hair. How my hair did not just fall out, I do not know. I continued doing this for three whole years.

Bored with blond I decided to use henna - natural henna. You could buy it from health shops, which were new things. Henna was sold in plastic bags. It was green powder and it had to be mixed with warm water. The smell was earthy, wood like, not really the desired scent for hair. The bathroom would take a hit too. So much to clear up. Weeks later I would spot a blob of henna somewhere in the bathroom, which made me feel guilty because at that time I was sharing a house with six other people.

Later, Nice'n Easy became my dye of choice and regularity. It continues to be so. In between applications of Nice'n Easy I sometimes go to the hairdresser's to have a 'full head' as the term goes.

Some say you can tell much about the image a person is trying to project by how they wear their hair. There is something in that, I'm certain. A precise, perfectionist is unlikely to have a mane of flowing hair, any more than a free spirited, loving the outdoors type, who lives off the land is likely to have a neat, precise no hair out of place, Mrs. Thatcher style, wouldn't move in a force nine gale, head of hair.

This leaves me to wonder that if we do, at least to an extent, choose how we have our hair, then why does the current Chancellor of the Exchequer imitate Caesar Augustus?