Dip dying inside

So I haven't gone silent or anything.... I just dropped my laptop and as it is barely wheezing through these days, it finally gave up the ghost. So I have been avoiding typing on the iPad as I usually get it wrong and all kinds of weird predictive text things start happening and it reads like I am either A. pissed or B. have gone senile early. Or both.

Of course it is at these times that I feel the need to blog about twenty things, such as the dreary friggin' weather, why I am not that excited about the Olympics but feel a pressure to do so, and how lovely it is that I now have a wife. Husband is Daddy Daycare, housekeeper, chief cook and bottle washer all rolled into one. He hasn't quite got to grips with the laundry yet, but hey, it's all much better round these parts. If we won the lottery, (which I hope to on Wednesday) Husband would be daddy daycare all the time and I would still work. Last Thursday I came home to a tray of home baked carrot cupcakes with frosting. Amazing. The day before had been peanut cookies (not his best but edible). We have had crumble and eton mess since. Yes, reader, I fear I have married a feeder.

So apart from him still job hunting, life in our neck of the woods is actually pretty lovely. I like working and he likes cooking with a glass of wine in hand by four pm, debating whether or not Angela Hartnett has the best recipe for thai fish cakes. He occasionally mopes about a bit feeling unmasculine, but I can handle these male pmt moments when I am getting tasty cakes.

I digress, because what I want to talk about is hairdressers. Tell me, have you EVER been to one that actually listened to what you wanted???

This is what I wanted: Now I am not sure this picture will even appear... As I am technically challenged, and have no idea how to upload with this here iPad. But if you google images of Erin Wasson at New York fashion week, on a website called Pila-pala you will see Erin in all her long limbed, razor cheeked beauty, crouching down on the ground in a black outfit. Wearing the hair I want. The hair I have so far taken to show to two hairdressers. Two. Yes. I even brought the iPad to one. Is my hair like Erin's mane?

No, in a word.

Not even close. First guy I went to is here in Berkhamsted where I reside. He is camp, funny and gossipy, a perfect hairdresser. I told him that I wanted to be far removed from a middle aged home counties blonde yummy mummy as possible, as the women where I live seem to sport this swishy look and I can't bear to be their clone. He laughed. He got it. Hurrah! I had a picture pulled from a mag in my sweaty palm. So an hour and much dying later, many articles read on what I should be wearing this summer and how to juggle my life, and.... I had a brown bob with Blonde bits beneath it. Like I stuck the top of my head in a dull brown dye and forgot to do the rest. The worst bit? Two women I knew were in the salon, so I had to smile and pretend that all was well as they stared at me as if to say 'what the fuck happened to your hair???'

Of course when the hairdresser pulled me over to the light and I expected to see dark roots and then hair grading in colour as it got to the bottom, so it was at its lightest at the ends. Instead it was a muddy forgettable colour on top and a dull blonde beneath. No white tips, no dip dye. Of course I said I loved it and ran home, where Husband said 'what have you done to your hair?' And Sproglet, bless him said 'I like it.' For a week, I tied my hair back. A friend didn't notice I had had my hair done, (brilliant - worth all that money) she just said it looked 'like you need a wash.' Another said I needed my roots done, which was hilarious as that's just what I had done...

So Sunday, armed with my credit card, (as a dear friend had treated me to first hair disaster) I went to another hairdresser, this one in London in swanky Hampstead. Called Mad lillies. Fabulous. Been before, felt in safe hands. But, even though I brought the iPad and showed the nice man three different pictures of Erin and her luscious locks, and even though we talked it all through for a good ten minutes, I am as far from Erin as you could be. I am a Nordic blonde. Ice queen blonde, with some roots. Oh yes, I got the white ends, but white middle and top too. None of that grading from brown to blonde. No, just some roots and then BLONDE. Oh my god I am blonde. Someone at work said it was 'Courtney love blonde.' Great. Who in their right mind every wants to look like Courtney? Well not since '93 anyway. It looks faker than any colour I have had before. I am hoping not Essex, not mutton. I will take grunge over mutton any day. After the ultimate fear of something happening to my kids, my next fear is that I ever look mutton... You know I am at the age, where an inch of a hem here, a bit of too much lippy there and suddenly the line is crossed and you are pure mutton!!! So I have to be careful.

Anyway, I said thank you and I loved it, because god forbid we ever tell them what we really think. Why is it I can argue the toss about most things in life, confrotation is my middle name, and yet, in a salon, I feel obliged to say 'I love it!' through gritted teeth?? I simply couldn't say to either hairdresser/ butcher 'what the fuck have you done??? Have you no eyes? Were we not looking at the same photo? Did we not talk about this? Have you wax in your ears? No? Then Why the hell did you ignore every thing I flipping said???!!!!!!' But I just stand there and pay politely and then leave and avoid mirrors for months. Every time I pass a mirror I think 'god her hair is so dyed! So fake!' then I realise, oh my god. It is infact me. More Saga from The Bridge than Erin from LA.

Photo to come. until then I will keep dreaming of dip dye, ombré, and all things fabulously haired. And I will avoid all mirrors.

ERIN:

Me: