This weekend, The Boy reached the grand old age of 26, and to commemorate the occasion, I decided to have the red/black/general emo colour taken out of my hair, and have it returned to some semblance of a normal hue (actually, that’s a total lie – it’s just a coincidence that both things happened this weekend, but I really want to tell the story about having my hair done).
I decided to take Friday afternoon off work (after asking permission from various manager types. Well, just the one manager type. Mine), as getting the colour stripped out of your hair, especially when it’s as thick as mine is, takes a LONG time. I also wanted to get some bits for The Boy’s birthday (as I spent pretty much all of last weekend with him, I hadn’t quite managed to finish my present purchasing, and work did insist on getting in the way this week), which I did quickly and easily. You know something’s going to go wrong when the first part of your afternoon seemingly goes a bit too well…and you see 3 separate single magpies on your travels (those little buggers followed me everywhere).
So, I have some hair extensions that have been taking up valuable space under my desk for quite some time, and I thought that it would be nice if I could wear them on a night out the day after my birthday – I took those with me to the hairdressers, so that I could see if it was possible to have my hair dyed to match (yes, I know, people usually do it the other way around, but it’s always nice to be different). Unfortunately, it transpires that when you’ve dyed your hair red, and your hair already has quite a bit of warmth in it, it’s probably not going to go a cool ash brown. And very unfortunately, this wasn’t mentioned until around 4 hours after I’d walked into the salon (and it probably would have saved us all some time, and me some money, if it had been).
So, my hair was bleached, and lightened, and I was warned that my hair would look very, very orange. Which it did (although it still wasn’t as bad as the time I dyed my hair red at Uni, and couldn’t afford to redo it, so by the time I came home for the Christmas holidays, Darling Sister took one look at me, chained me to a kitchen chair and raced to Boots as fast as she could, returning laden down with Garnier Nutrisse, conditioner and scissors). Then a new dye was put on, many murmuring noises were made about how nice the hair was looking, and how it had taken really well, and a sense of hope and security stole over me. Oh, what a mistake. As my hair was being dried, it became clear that, if my hair hadn’t turned ginger, it certainly embodied one of ginger’s close relations – strawberry blonde, or flame orange perhaps. Now, I’ve been going to the same hairdresser on and off for the last 8 years, they’re brilliant usually, and it had taken them over 4 hours to do this to my hair. So I did what anyone would do – smiled sweetly at the mirror, made pleased, murmuring noises, and gave a nice tip. And then cried all the way home.
That’s not to say that I don’t like ginger hair (some of my best friends are ginger). It’s just that there is no way that I would have willingly paid £80 for it. The particular shade that I was sporting as I left the salon was one that only Karen Gillan could pull off. And (to paraphrase Chandler from Friends) I’ve met me, and I’m no Karen Gillan. Every time I looked in the mirror on Friday, I wanted to cry. Then The Boy had some bad news (his car is…well, I don’t want to go into it. She’s been badly beaten up – luckily, he wasn’t driving, or indeed, in the car, at the time), and instead of being supportive and offering to go and kick people, all I could do was whinge about my hair. (In my defence, each time I inadvertently caught sight of my reflection, I thought that my head was on fire.)
After begging him to stop mentioning it, The Boy and I got through Friday night relatively easily. It was his birthday on Saturday, and to make up for being a Bad Girlfriend, who is more interested in her hair than anything else (we can add shallow to my list of irritating personality traits), I took him to the Doctor Who Experience as part of his birthday present (I don’t want to ruin the surprise in case you decide to go, but there’s an interactive bit, where you act like the Doctor’s companion. He refers to you as a ‘human sub-species – the shopper’. See – this is why Matt Smith should marry me, he already knows me so well. Moving on…), and the museum part of the exhibition has lots of clips of the show playing. Apparently, the bit where David Tennant regenarates into Matt Smith and says the line ‘still not ginger’ was repeating on a loop, and did so about 6 times as we were standing near it, with The Boy praying that I wouldn’t overhear. Luckily for him, by the time we’d got back out into the sunshine and he felt ready to mention it, I could see the funny side. Ish. Then a lady walked past me on the way back to the Tube, and was looking at me as if she knew me, and was going to say hello. If this was you, I’m very sorry, but I don’t think that I know you. At all.
Darling Sister, The Boy, Lovely Mum and Lovely Stepdad kept telling me how much they loved my hair, although Darling Sister did admit that it wasn’t even, and had lots of different patches (I AM the girl that McFly sang about – I used to think that having 5 colours in your hair was cool. It is not). The Boy kept telling me that it was a cool colour. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ll be 26 in 2 weeks – I don’t want a cool hair colour, I want to look normal. Darling Sister told me that it looks like Amy Childs’ (from The Only Way is Essex, if you were wondering) does when it’s fading. Again, this is not the look that I was going for.
So, I bought an ash brown hair dye today. And it’s turned my hair pretty much the colour it was on Friday morning. Before I spent £80 that could have gone on shoes. If you’re a teenager reading this, and you’re really, really hacked off because your parents won’t let you dye your hair, believe me, it’s for the best. I’ve used up pretty much all of my whining priviledges for the next year, just on this one weekend. Bad times.
But I think that The Boy had a good birthday. Mainly because it was the finale of Doctor Who last night. For those of you who’ve seen it, who saw that coming?! Well, The Boy did. But still, isn’t Stephen Moffat good? I want to be a writer on Doctor Who when I grow up…
My name's Carrie-Ann, and I'm a Shopaholic. 