Malaysian style

I loathe having anything done to my hair.

I have thick wiry hair that kind of curls. Not beautiful pre Raphaelite curls or corkscrew ringlets but the sort that just half-heartedly attempts it. It needs tremendous coaxing to encourage it not to frizz and you can imagine the traumas of being in a tropical country where humidity is a constant issue. (Does anyone recall the Friends’ episode set in Barbados with Monica’s hair?)

I’ve always had thick hair but it didn’t begin to curl properly until adolescence. My mother told me that people paid a fortune to have hair like mine. She told me this over and over as though that might help. Looking back I suspect that that some of the traumas I had with my hair might be because as a small child I was tasked with brushing it myself. I brushed the surface and allowed a vast bird’s nest – nay a bird colony – to grow underneath in the nape of my neck. When this was discovered my mother claimed something weird must have happened in the paddling pool that day. Little did she realize that I’d grown it myself through neglect. I screamed the house down while comb teeth and hairbrush bristles flew through the air. My bird’s nest had to be cut out while I was pinned to the table.

So I hate the hairdressers. Quite often the first thing a hairdresser or their junior hair washer says to me is “have you ever thought of having your hair straightened?” Whether or not I like the curls, anyone who thinks curly hair is not nice isn’t the right person to cut my hair.

It’s got even worse in Thailand because of the language barrier. I have found someone to cut my hair but she’s in England and mostly I’m not. This suits me because I don’t have to go too often but when I’m there I have to grab the opportunity so that I get sorted out at least once a year.

But my hair has been troubling me in recent weeks and I won’t be in the UK until March so … I ambushed myself last week in KL. I walked into a salon and asked for an appointment. He didn’t do quite what I wanted but it’s a good cut.

They did the oddest thing: I had my hair washed ‘Malaysian style’ – in the chair with a bottle of water and shampoo. Does this happen anywhere else in the world?

Same same but different

I am right at the end of the Mary Wesley biography and I’m loving it; really enjoying it. The closer I get toward the end the more details there are about the books and I know I’ve got to have a Mary Wesley fest. I can’t wait to read them again now I know more about her life and I’m twenty years older (can I really be twenty years older? How has that happened?)

Husband has got some colleagues coming out next week, so if I hurry, I can get them sent to one of them for him to bring out for me. Husband appears to have forgotten the ban on buying books. Husband is a very good man. (What do you think? Perhaps if they aren’t purchased by me in a regular shop and they aren’t addressed to me by Amazon, maybe they don’t really count as purchases?)

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In other news, my lack of post yesterday was because I was traumatised by another haircut. It was bound to happen sooner or later. A friend had recommended a hairdresser and so the other day I set out full of enthusiasm, clutching an address and directions and I couldn’t bloomin’ find the place. This happens to me all the time in Bangkok.

I have a very low ‘mad’ threshold when it comes to my barnet. My hair looks crazy when it’s a good cut and behaving well, but I was looking battier and battier as the dreadful hair cut I had last June grew out. I was attempting to keep a semblance of control with hair slides but it wasn’t working out. In fact, it was such a terrible hair cut, that not even my mother made her usual ‘Oh Jen …’ in tones of terrible disappointment …‘what have you done to your hair?’ comment.

Anyway, I never did find the recommended hairdresser so I walked into one (an internationally branded one) off the streets. What could I expect? She was lovely, spoke English. I showed her my picture and she said ‘similar to this?’ I should’ve known, shouldn’t I?

It’s not quite right but at least is less barmy than before.

Just Say No

One of the very best things about leaving the UK for Thailand was that it enabled me to wean myself off certain addictive television. I was completely hooked on Coronation Street, Eastenders, Holby and Casualty.

Now, I AM aware of the off button – and I DO know how to use it, but … I … well I didn’t. I was relatively happy being hooked on them. I wasn’t doing anyone else any harm, was I?

But the whole celebrity thing: Yuk. And, a bit like picking a scab, sometimes I just couldn’t resist it. I only had to be weak for a couple of episodes before I was hyperventilating for the next one. Or, goddamn it, going online to watch the live stream. Yes, readers, I hang my head in shame but how I loved Fame Academy …

By the time we moved I’d really had my fill of all the media celebrity fascination and although I’m au fait with the off button, I just couldn’t … quite … actually do it. The only way I could cope was to not get inveigled into the programme in the first place.

I was delighted then to exile myself here because suddenly I was in a foreign land where I didn’t see or hear any of the celebrity thing. Well, of course I do see it and I do hear it, but because it’s not ‘Where is the loo?’ or ‘chicken fried rice, please’ I can’t understand it.

So yesterday I was in the hairdressers. (Yes, again. Having my hair cut again because it wasn’t short enough last time, and yes, now I’ve got the haircut of a dorky eight year old boy but even I’m getting weary at all my tales of my barnet so that’s enough of that). So I’m in the hairdressers and Johnny with the scissors tells me that the woman having her hair washed (out of earshot) is a celebrity. A soap star.

Well when she appears from the washing, it’s a terrible anticlimax because she just looks like a Thai lady. It’s not like I’m sitting next to Vera Duckworth or Pauline whatsername that Jane Wenham Jones’ book told me had been killed off. But there is some Diva like behaviour because the massage parlour next door sends in a masseur and while the Soap Star is having her hair cut, she also gets her feet and lower legs massaged.

Damn it. I wish I’d thought of that.

Uhm, why?

Why did I think it was a good idea?

Why did I think, when I am about to come to England to see family and friends that it was a good idea to get my hair cut?

Why when I’m about to meet blog friends with only the vaguest idea of what I look like, did I think it was a good idea to go to a new, different hairdresser?

If my hair were a person, it would have special needs.

If my hair had heroes, it would be Professor Trelawny and Crystal Tips from ‘Crystal Tips and Alistair’ (Alistair is the dog. Obviously. The dog has sensible hair.)





















If someone was wishing not to offend me, they would call my hair interesting. Or big.

Why didn’t I realise going to the hairdresser after wearing a helmet at go-karting that pasted my hair attractively to my scalp, that the hairdresser would get the wrong impression of my hair?

Why, when the hairdresser told me it needed some body cut into it, did I not run as fast as possible screaming from the scissors?

Please. Please, if I meet you in England, don’t mention my hair.

Just stepped out of the sa-lo-n

Yesterday I had my hair cut.

I had a LOT cut off. From just above my belly button to above my shoulders. It’s too hot here to wear it long so usually it’s always twisted into a pleat with a sort of firework of curls appearing out of the top of my head.

When I told Daughter I was planning to have it all cut off she asked me what style. I said ‘you know that black and white picture of me at Nanny and Granddad Kent’s, with my hair in a bob? I thought I’d do that again.’

‘Oh Mum,’ she said ‘you are so pretty in that picture.’

‘Mmmm, thanks, darling, but I was 17 in that picture: having my hair cut like that isn’t going to change the face in the middle of the hair do. Sadly, I’m still going to look like I do now, but with shorter hair.’

I didn’t point out that I fancied the pants of the photographer and was doing an outrageous ‘take me to bed’ face (indidentally, the photographer did offer, and I turned him down … foooooool.)

I’d love to say that like A.Writer’s post about her swishy hair cut, I too look like I’ve just stepped out of the salon. I’d be delighted to report that any more whooshy head movements would result in a trip to the chiropractor. I’d love to announce that my hair is glossy, shiny and lustrous, but sadly I fit more into the Hagrid hair type, and I look more like I’ve just stepped out the back of a thorny bush and into a wild wind.

Oh well, you just can’t have everything, can you?

Mind you I’d’ve just settled for straight hair…