Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

Sunday saw the dawn­ing of a new era as I, against my bet­ter judge­ment it seems, returned to my nat­ural hair colour.

It all seemed such a bright idea, go back to an ash blonde/brown and there’ll be man­age­able roots, no diabol­ical fad­ing, no more high main­ten­ance issues, just hair for hair’s sake, on my head, for my head’s sake. On that basis, it was a good idea, until I turned and looked at myself in the mir­ror and was reminded all too read­ily exactly why I’d star­ted down the slip­pery slope of per­man­ent hair dying in the first place. “Nat­ural Light Ash Brown” it may claim to be, but dis­tinctly non­des­cript murk is what it is.

My hair is not a flame red or golden blonde, or even a smoul­der­ing bru­nette, it is in fact, the pig­men­ted tonal rep­res­ent­a­tion of what can only be likened to that of Win­nie the Pooh’s “Blustery Day”: Dank, over­cast and invari­ably windswept.

Sod it, I want the rut­ting rodents back.

Given that since the “Guinea-Pig Do’s” depar­ture, my locks have splintered with alarm­ing reg­u­lar­ity and have on occa­sion threatened to snap out­right from the root, I’ve been forced to lather my head in an assort­ment of con­di­tion­ing treat­ments as a ges­ture of good­will in the hope that my follicles will accept my suddy apo­logy for being such a vain cow and won’t insist on ren­der­ing me bald.

The latest con­coc­tion resides in a stout tub with a screw-top lid and boasts prom­ises of restor­ing soft­ness and sup­ple­ness. Such unwieldy pack­aging calls to mind the good old “chocol­ate fire-guard” adage when used in the shower. Need­less to say, more con­di­tioner landed in my lap than on my head, so whilst my shoulder-length tresses con­tinue to resemble a matty nylon comic-wig, my pubic hair is now akin to the fibres emit­ted from the arse of silk worms.

In keep­ing with the theme of my appear­ance, I now wear glasses. Exhib­its A & B.

Not all the time though, accord­ing the the rather fluffy bloke who fit­ted them for me at the Opti­cians, who looked as though he was young enough to be on work exper­i­ence. Appar­ently they are only for when read­ing, watch­ing TV, driv­ing, sit­ting at a com­puter or dur­ing any pro­longed and/or con­cen­trated use of my eyes.

So, it seems the only time I don’t have to wear them is when gaz­ing into space absent-mindedly for peri­odic short bursts, then.

Right-o, just so we’re clear on that.