Swinginess
Well, now I’m the proud owner of some rather ghetto-fabulous nails, I thought it time to put the second part of my Footballers’ Wives grooming plan into action. I booked into a swanky salon in the posh marina town that is also home to the posh restaurant whose name cannot be mentioned for fear of anyone finding out about it (keep up, I’ve told you all this before). My thought process (somewhat erratic at the best of times) was that if this is the home to lots of posh, groomed women, then the local swanky salon must be the place to go.
Hubby got to stay at home and goblin-sit while I ventured into posh-town and was introduced to my colourist. Unfortunately this did nothing for my fragile ego as not only was she stunningly blonde and gorgeous, she was also considerably taller and thinner than I. Oh well, she was very sweet, although sadly she was from Northern Ireland so I couldn’t understand a single word she said. Not to be deterred, I adopted the smiley nod that worked so well at the nail bar and sat feeling like a bit fat dishevelled dollop while we discussed how awful my hair was, and we got on famously. She parked me at the mirror and combed me through wearing that ‘oh dear’ expression that seems to be solely for the artistically natured when viewing the somewhat shabby. The verdict, of which I understood very little, seemed to be that my hair was very damaged, and that bleached blonde highlights wasn’t the way to go at all. (Noooo! I thought – it’s got to be frosted and fabulous!) We opted therefore ( I say ‘we’ as though I had some choice in it) for a rich chocolate with subtle honey and caramel highlights running through it. And yes, I know that’s what they were because she let me touch the little loops of false hair in that cardboard folder thingy they show you, and I read the labels.
So, to cut a long story short, four magazines (won’t bother with Vanity Fair again – too many serious articles and not enough about how skinny/rude/unlucky in love Paris Hilton is for my liking), three cups of tea (there’s always hair floating in it isn’t there), several hundred bits of tin foil, two really nice massages (I might actually have nodded off) on this wicked chair which had a little pad of buttons to push if you wanted to lean back more, or have your feet up and TWO HOURS (I kid you not) later, I was once again parked in front of the mirror and introduced to my stylist. This time, she was from Birmingham which was slightly more understandable, and we went for a blunt cut just on the shoulders with some long layers to add a bit of ‘movement’, whilst all the time politely ignoring my phone, which was beeping constantly with ‘whr the hll r u?’ type messages from Hubby. Another hour later and with a slightly red face (their hairdryers are really blinking hot), I was looking damn fine even though I say so myself. It certainly was still brown, but it was straight, swingy and gorgeously chocolaty, with nice goldy bits which glittered in the overhead lights.
I felt a little like my friend C, who is always groomed and fabulous – hair immaculate, clothes classic and fashionable and nails perfect. This, I told her on the phone later in an epic conversation that must have cost her half her mortgage (grovelling apologies to C’s hubby, the lovely R!), is actually quite a nice way to feel. I must explain that we’ve known each other for donkey’s years and can have long, rambling enjoyable conversations without actually talking about anything specifically. We’re planning a disreputable child-free weekend away shortly with our other friend, R. This, as any woman knows, takes vast amounts of planning, mostly via very long email chats and huge telephone conversations. Hubby cannot understand how we’ll possibly have anything to talk about when we get together because we surely must have exhausted all possible topics of conversation. Not so, I assure him. C, R and I are queens of the long, rambling conversation and lack of topic is no barrier, as massive lurches in subject matter are the crux of keeping the conversation flowing. We know. We’re experts.
Anyway, back to C. I have long admired her groomed-ness whilst assuming that it was her natural state. I now have double the amount of admiration for her having discovered that its actually quite hard work to keep all this stuff up. I now, though, understand why she does it (no, and not because Hubby can barely stop his tongue from hanging out whenever C is in the building), because it feels good, makes you feel confident even, in a swingy, shiny kind of way.
All good then, until I got to the till where my red face turned considerably redder. I entered my PIN number with trembling hands and slunk home to try to explain to Hubby why I’d just spend two weeks’ grocery money in three hours. ‘But they do Ronan Keating’s wife’s hair there…’ I whined feebly at his furious, departing back ‘..and look how swingy and chocolaty it is..’ Men. I hope my roots don’t show quickly because I’m not allowed out for another six months…
