Hair mares

I’m enjoying the freedoms getting older brings - but the old lady hair is a total mare

My old lady hair in its full bendy weirdness

I don’t mind this getting older business - so far. I’m sure it gets more challenging as you go on, but for now I’m rather enjoying it.

Turning 60 was a big positive change for me. I felt released from all the pressure of being judged for my appearance. Nobody cares what a 60-year-old woman looks like. Hurrah!

OK, so sometimes at my current age (64) you become completely invisible and I have been ignored and talked over by younger women, which irritated me exceedingly.

But mostly I feel more comfortable in my skin, than I ever have, be it ever-so saggy and richly peppered with life’s scars and lumps and bumps, as put so perfectly by Chrissy Hynde in Tattoed Love Boys.

What a track… and what a woman.

Did you see her at Glastonbury this year? She is still the coolest woman on the planet, at 72. What a role model.

That’s how I want to continue this ageing adventure, at high speed, in rock chick style.

But there is one thing about sailing this ship of years that is giving me a mighty case of the pip. My freaking hair.

It just doesn’t do what it’s told any more. And it’s traumatic for me, because my hair has always been the one thing I didn’t have to worry about.

When I felt fat, short, a weird shape, bright red with rosacea (that’s gone – a story for another time), my legs choked with rainforest vines of varicose veins, I could get by on my hair.

Good and swingy, straight with body and volume, did what it was told. No more.

Now it gets wiggy at the slightest change in atmospheric pressure and moisture.

It goes all bouffy, with strange shapes which aren’t so much waves as bends and the terrible antennae, waving in the breeze. Making me look like a mad woman.

I had a bad attack of the wiggies this week, with desperation ponytails my only resort, so I called in the cavalry.

1. Send for the emergency package.

2. The joy of the Opening.

3. The Gear.

4. The really serious Gear.

5. Wash your hair and slap the Gear on while it’s wet. Keep it on as long as you can stand it.

6. Towel dry, comb through and apply the next stage of Gear.

   

7. Style as you like and venture forth, sans bends, sans wiggies.

Then send up a massive thanks to hair genius Sam McKnight for creating these amazing products, which have the added benefit of smelling like very expensive scent.

Which is not surprising when you find out he created them with the amazing Lyn Harris - of the brand Perfumer H.

Find out more about Sam’s products here https://sammcknight.com/collections/all-products

(And let me assure you - this post is NOT sponsored. I don’t take money to recommend stuff. If I mention something it’s because it makes my life better.)