Hair

This is a party political broadcast on behalf of the ginger and red hair party. It has been published in response to the questions I and fellow gingers get asked on average thirty thousand times a day. Hopefully this should clear things up.

Yes it is natural. Only the deeply weird or those in to role playing dungeons and dragons are voluntarily ginger.
Yes I am lucky. It’s a source of constant joy. I get up everyday and thank the baby Jesus. Or it’s just hair.
No it doesn’t run in the family. I am the only one
No I am not the milk-man’s.
I do not get offended by people calling me ginger. I certainly don’t need you or anyone else to leap in and say “well it’s more strawberry blonde really.”
In the same way that you don’t crap your pants when someone says “blonde” or “brunette”, I don’t soil myself or feel the need to weep when someone mentions “ginger”.
Yes ginger hair is hilarious. I can never have too many pictures of myself where it looks like my head’s on fire.

I was forced to send an email to John Frieda on Wednesday. Well to his “people” or the people who run his website. Having hair that isn’t properly curly and is by no means straight and likes to inflate itself to the size of a barrage balloon and amuse itself by contorting itself in to many shapes (it’s favourite being the massive cow licked fringe) I need to use some sort of product to calm it. Left to it’s own devises I look like Justin Lee Collins or like someone has piped a Mr Whippy on to my head.

Whilst staying at my mum and dad’s I used my mum’s “John Frieda Shine Shock” (hey, sur casa, me casa) Which was very nice. But as she has dark brown hair I felt the brunette one wasn’t bringing out the natural tones and hightlights in my hair. Besides it’s hers and she wouldn’t let me take it.

So I went to Sainsburys and trawled the shelves only to discover that the full hair care range is only available in blonde or brunette. Well sod you then. So I spent £6 on a colour glaze. Which made my hair simultaneously greasy and sticky and made my bathroom smell like chemical warfare had taken place. So I wrote and told John as much. Why, I asked, have I spent £6 on something I could have achieved with a bottle of chip oil? Why must I crawl to the bathroom under the mushroom cloud of chemicals?

Shockingly I’ve not had a response. They are possibly taking out some kind of hair care fatwa upon me. But honestly. If I am forced to go through life looking like a lion or the love child of Kevin Keegan and Rod Hull then at least I should have something to tame the mane. It’s still in recovery from when I decided I could cut my own fringe in. My attempts at “thinning” only led to the creation of an underfringe. I attempted to cut it as close as possible to my head to stop the bizarrely short fringe poking through. I am now growing it back and it is growing vertically. So I look a bit like Billy Whizz. To cut or not to cut. That is the question.

I tend to have one really bad hair cut a year and spend the rest of the year growing it out. This means I only have to spend an hour a year sitting there whilst some teenager with a pixie mullet picks up my hair and drops it with disdain whilst asking me who cut it last (er you did). And then hacks away at it then stops. “hang on did we say sweeping fringe or asymmetrical?” “we said Sweeping” “ah well it’ll grow and your fringe looks quite nice starting there, up by your hairline”. They then blow dry it in to a halo and then hack in to it with razors. Only stopping to ask questions “did you want an undercut?”, “did we say yes to the mullet”. No! no we didn’t. We never had a discussion. I told you what I wanted and you did what you wanted. At no point did these ambitions coincide and at no point did we have a discussion. You couldn’t even get my coffee right and now you’re setting about my head with knives!

OK not knives. Anyway. I think I’ll have my annual haircut in November, then any experimental bits can grow in time for the photos that will be taken at Christmas and New Year. If not, at least it’s winter and I can wear a hat.