Post Script: Since posting this, I’ve heard from my friend, esteemed hairdresser Gregori Ruggeri, of the eponymous New York salon.
As he has been officially named the purveyor of ‘Best Blonde in New York’ in New York magazine’s famous Best Of issue, his opinion carries serious weight on this issue.
He loves my colour and we’ve decided it’s not silver, or platinum - it’s TITANIUM.
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Original post: I am currently trying for the third – or is it fourth? – time to let my hair grow out grey.
Every time before when I’ve got to this stage there’s been a morning when I’ve looked in the mirror, seen an old hag with terrible hair looking back and have speed dialled my hairdresser for a half head. ASAP.
Every time it was the greatest relief to leave the salon a blonde again.
So why am I subjecting myself to this journey again?
Lots of reasons, the first of course being that it’s cool to go grey. All my really hip friends have already gone there. So, FOMO.
Then there is the hassle and expense of getting highlights.
I love all my hair people, so if I’m going to spend a few hours with anyone trussed up like a Christmas turkey, they aren’t a bad choice, but I find the expense of time almost unbearable.

You can just about read, although the arms of your specs can get in the way of the skilled tail comb picking up those tiny strands and once you’re turkeyed up, it can be hard to push them through the tight little packets.
But even when I manage it, I’m too restless and edgy to concentrate, because apart from when I’m sleeping, writing or reading (in comfort), I find it practically impossible to sit still. I always have.
That’s why I don’t watch much TV. Every two minutes I think of something more important to do and pop up from my seat like a jack-in-the-box.
I can just about watch something wonderful like Slow Horses, Ted Lasso, or Meet My Agent, on my iPad, horizontal in bed, because once I’m in there, I have committed to the relaxation zone of the day.

But if I’m dressed, in the sitting room, there are a spices to alphabeticise, socks to pair and books to curate, activities I find a lot more compelling than anything on TV. I’d rather do a freezer inventory.
As my best friend first said to me 45 years ago (and it still makes me laugh): “I like to see and do.” That’s me.
So, there’s that, but there is also some kind of moral compulsion to embrace my grey self. Not anything to do with judgemental muttonhood, that there’s some kind of age when you ‘shouldn’t’ colour your hair anymore. Stuff that.
I’ve always said I’d be blonde until death, but now I actually am older, I find I want to own it. Be out and proud with my hair age, as I am with my wrinkles, liver spots and scars.
But I do think it’s harder in the long term for blondes to go grey.
In the early stages it’s much more strenuous for brunettes, because if you’ve been colouring your hair back to your youthful dark shade, there is a savage regrowth line to get over.
But once brunettes get through that – and several smart pals of mine did it during lockdown – they end up with a head of hair of glamorous lightness, very flattering to older skin.

Whereas for me, forgoing the highlights means that behind the grey, I have my natural hair colour, which is a particularly unappealing shade of mouse and why I started having highlights in the first place. In my 20s.
So, it’s not the grey of going natural that freaks me out, it’s the flat dreariness behind it, which makes my hair darker, when grey, not lighter.
But I’m not giving up yet. My wonderful cutter, Andrew, is taking it a little shorter for me at the moment, which I really like and I ‘ve embraced silver earrings, for the first time in my life, as they look better with it.
The morning may still come when one look in the mirror sends me racing to speed dial John Frieda, or lovely Ken, my Hastings colourist, but for now I’m embracing it.
[That picture of Hilary is from one of my absolute favourite blogs That’s Not My Age, by the brilliant Alyson Walsh, another woman who knows how to do grey.]

My long grey hair (started prior to COVID) seems to be controversial. At least once a week someone will accuse me of putting in highlights because “no-one has grey hair like yours”. Hysterical!
i went completely white/gray for about four years. Recently, i put some low lights back in. Why? Because I could tell that people were treating me differently with my white/gray hair. With a deference I didn't care for. (For instance, when my hair was white/gray, a mid-30s friend of my daughter said "fuck" in my presence, then looked at me and said, oh, sorry. Me! The queen of swearing!) Now that I'm much less gray, people treat me "normally" again. I don't know--it's still a hassle to color it, but not terrible. And to me, it's worth it to not be so completely invisible and considered ancient. I was fine with the way I looked in the mirror. But not fine with the way the world treated me. (And the number of women who told me I was "brave" to have gray hair!!! Crazy!)