Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

Wed­nes­day after­noon saw me take the plunge and begin my styl­istic jour­ney from raven-haired ex-Goth to the plat­inum blonde enjoyed by such pop icons as Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera. Ha. Right.

It all star­ted out rather well, I’d got­ten the kit which, con­tained powdered bleach and cream per­ox­ide, from Super­drug (Buy One, Get One Free) and I’d used it before, so was pretty confident.

I read the instruc­tions, K applied the mix­ture and then we looked at the clock and deduced from the instruc­tion guide that I should leave it on for 90 minutes.

Being the Essex girl that I am, bleach and per­ox­ide are old friends. My first exper­i­ence of them was that God-awful “Sun-In”, does any­one remem­ber that? It was a weak bleachy-solution; a cheap affair in a pump-spray bottle, aimed pre­dom­in­antly at teens. The idea was that you sprayed streaks into your hair using “Sun-In” and then laid in the sun/used a hair-dryer on the streaks to develop the bleach and gives you sun-kissed high­lights. It was a con bottled and pack­aged pret­tily. The solu­tion was so weak, it didn’t so much as give you sun-kissed strands as much as orangey patches, as try­ing to spray “streaks” was impossible with that plastic pump-action lid.

There I was at about 11 years old, sat on a din­ing chair over by the kit­chen sink as my mother cursed and tut­ted as she spent the even­ing spray­ing six and a half quids worth of crap into my hair and then blast­ing me with her pre-historic Babyliss hairdryer (that she still owns) in 20 minute bursts — so des­per­ate was I to be like all the other girls with their California-esque Surf-girl high­lights. I wasn’t any­more pop­u­lar or sum­mery or exotic or fash­ion­able the next day, just decidedly more ginger, which didn’t go down well in the play­ground. I should have known then that it would all end in heart­break, but hind­sight is vin­dict­ive like that, isn’t it?

I didn’t meet hair-lighteners again until my 17^th birth­day when I was going through the cus­tom­ary teen­age Gothic rebel­lion and con­vinced my mum that hav­ing the under­neath layer of my nat­ur­ally blonde hair dyed jet black and the top layer high­lighted with a more bril­liant blonde would be a great move. Over £50 and a trip to the local hairdress­ers later and I’d got­ten my Birth­day wish. It all went without a hitch, although I do remem­ber the high­light­ing pro­cess stink­ing and mak­ing my scalp tingle.

By the time that style had grown out, sum­mer was approach­ing and I’d got­ten tick­ets to V Fest­ival. I was still “rebelling” and was adam­ant that hav­ing pink hair was the ulti­mate step in my pil­grim­age toward indi­vidu­al­ity and wanted to show­case my new “do” at the fest­ival. In pre­par­a­tion for my pink tresses, my locks first had to be bleached out com­pletely so that the fluor­es­cent dye would take. Cue a rather frazzled mum nervously turn­ing my hair from ash blonde to brassy, Essex yel­low to a crappy orangey-pink that would fade out to non-existence dur­ing the course of that festival.

My hair was bleached at home again some time after that, but I don’t remem­ber it very well.

And that, brings us back up to Wed­nes­day. I sat with a towel around my shoulders and a plastic bag on my head and waited for my inner 1950s star­let to be revealed. 10 to 20 minutes in, the recog­nis­able heat and tingle that I’d always asso­ci­ated with the pro­cess began. No prob­lem I thought, this is just like last time. It was just a sense of warm­ness, like wrap­ping your hair in a bath towel that you’ve just got­ten out of the tumble-dryer, quite pleas­ant really. I like gentle heat on my head, I find it strangely com­fort­ing, it makes me feel all snug­gly and dozy — that’s why I don’t use hair-dryers: I find myself fall­ing asleep halfway through styl­ing my hair.

After 30 minutes of sit­ting with that bag on my head, the fuzzy warmth had morphed into sear­ing pain need­ling the crown of my scalp. I no longer felt smi­ley and sleepy, my eyes were stream­ing and my jaw clenched. I reached up to touch the plastic at the source of the pain, and now scal­ded, snapped my hand away. The plastic was so hot I could barely touch it and the slight­est pres­sure on the sur­face of the bag sent an acute burn­ing sen­sa­tion shoot­ing to the very core of my head, enough to melt my grey mat­ter and send it drib­bling from my ears and nose. I had vis­ions of my skin and hair com­ing away with the plastic cap in an hour’s time and then being driven scream­ing up the A414 to Cas­u­alty, with my head in my hands, quite lit­er­ally. I per­severed for about 30 seconds more and then panicked.

K gingerly removed the plastic cap using a hand towel as though it was a pair of oven gloves, steam bil­lowed from under the poly­thene and into the atmo­sphere as if it were smoke and my head on fire. It was agony. I rushed under the shower and was met with relief as the pain sub­sided to a prick­ling sensitivity.

And then it came. The roar of laughter was sud­den and unex­pec­ted. I looked up to see K, eyes wide and hold­ing onto the door frame to keep her­self upright. “Oh my God! Your hair!”

Oh My God indeed. Oh My God in-bloody-deed.

My hair looked like a Dulux col­our sample chart. I spor­ted a rather (impress­ively smooth, it must be said) Earth-tone gradi­ent from root to tip. My roots were white, an inch fur­ther and we were met with lemon yel­low, then canary, then marmalade orange, then rusty orange with patches of brown.

With my hair wet and brushed from my face, I looked like a Thun­der­Cat. With it dry and fluffy, it could have been quite under­stand­ably mis­taken for a col­lect­ive noun of Guinea Pigs cop­u­lat­ing atop my bonce.

Night­mare. Abso­lute nightmare.

Lots of Inter­net research and a chat with a hairdresser later, it was advised that I should dye my hair red, as dying it brown or black would turn it green and re-bleaching would make it fall out. Great.

After 48 hours and a hat-covered trip to Tesco, I now own 2 boxes of “Radi­ant Ruby” hair-dye…

To Be Continued…