Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Let’s do this together YOUR
COMMUNITY CORNER
The Dark Lord has been renamed The Orange Lord since she gave herself – and the bathroom – a makeover at the weekend with a bottle of black hair dye and blonde hair bleach.
I’d come in after shopping and got straight on with cooking dinner on Saturday, but I did wonder why my daughter was in the bathroom for so long as she’s never been that well acquainted with the shower gel.
When she appeared in the kitchen some time later looking like the Medusa with one side of her hair in silver foil snakes, and the other slathered in black gunk, my jaw dropped in shock.
Only for seconds, though, before my scream reflex kicked in.
Looking alarmed at my reaction, Jesse turned around and ran back up the stairs.
I followed her, still bellowing and dreading what I was going to find.
“What the… What have you done?” I stood and yelled in despair. The bathroom looked like a battlefield – black dye all over the towels, on the walls, sink, shower… and all over her clothes.
“You get in the shower NOW,” I screeched, and Jesse almost jumped in there fully clothed, while I tried to recover from the shock.
I know teenagers do this sort of thing all the time, but I thought I could work up to this particular chapter in the parenting teens manual.
I even did it myself, but at least I worked in a hairdresser’s on Saturdays and got my mates to dye it properly. I remember back in the early 80s having a black bob with a bleached blonde undercut, which was then dyed orange. While Satan’s Idiot Minion ignored me when I told her that bleaching her dark hair would go bright orange – not blonde. And now her lovely chestnut brown curls are yellow at the front and a frizzy Tango orange at the black.
“Oh it’s not that bad,” she keeps saying to herself in the mirror. “No it’s not, if you intended to look like a clownfish,” I like to add from behind her.
I can laugh about it now, especially as she’ll have to go around with a head of half black and half orange hair until I dye it back for school. But at the time, I was really cross and her phone has now been removed for two weeks, plus pocket money stopped for the foreseeable to pay for the damage.
It took ages to clear up and I still can’t get all the black hair dye stains off the white woodwork and lino floor, so please send me your heavy duty cleaning tips – and any ideas on how to get through the last week of homeschooling without resorting to manacles and cat-o’-nine-tails!
Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.
Dear Coleen
My girlfriend is constantly comparing me to her ex-fiance, which I’m getting sick of. I have mentioned it to her in the past, but she just says: “Don’t be silly – I hardly mention him”, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
It’s like she hero-worships this guy, even though he left her. He had a glamorous job as a pilot, but was pretty full of himself, if you ask me.
And she seems to have conveniently forgotten all the times he treated her badly and went AWOL for days without contacting her, and that he dumped her, leaving her angry and heartbroken at the time.
But any time there’s a TV programme on about holidays or airports or anything relating to her ex at all, she’ll mention him. She basically uses any excuse to drop him into conversation.
We’ve been together for just over two years now, so I can’t believe this is still going on. I was going to ask her to marry me, but even though I love her, I can’t face a lifetime of being compared to this other guy.
How can I get this message through to her without coming across as insecure and pathetic?
Coleen says
I don’t think you should worry about coming across as insecure and pathetic – it’s entirely reasonable to not want your girlfriend constantly talking about her ex. Just be honest – tell her you’d been thinking about marriage, but you don’t want to spend a lifetime in someone’s shadow.
To give her the benefit of doubt, maybe she genuinely doesn’t realise how often she mentions him, so every time she does, that’s when you should pick her up on it and say: “Oh, there he is again”.
There’s no reason to row over it – simply point out that she talks about him loads and you don’t want to be anyone’s second best.
You want to be with someone who wants to be with you and not her ex-boyfriend. She shouldn’t need reminding why they broke up, but remind her!
The fact is, I think anyone would become insecure if their partner constantly brought up an ex and talked about them in glowing terms.
Of course you’re going to think: “Does she still want to be with him?” It’s down to her to make you feel loved and secure, and she’s not doing that.
She hero worships him, but he dumped her
DNA FAMILY SECRETS BBC2, 9pm STACEY Dooley steps into the Davina Mccall role of tea, sympathy and a secret stash of photos in this new Long Lost Family-esque show.
The focus is on the DNA that connects us, with a massive database now available thanks to more than 25 million people worldwide doing a home test.
It’s a gripping show, with big reveals that we haven’t seen since the days of Jeremy Kyle. And it’s not just about reuniting long lost relatives – although there’s plenty of that. It might also be a DNA question about a hereditary disease or lost heritage.
“DNA doesn’t lie but are we ready for the truth?” says Stacey.
Bill, 75, wants to know what happened to his father, an African
American GI stationed in Loughborough, who went back to America after the war and was never heard from again. Does Bill have any living relatives?
Cut to a shot of top geneticist Turi King, in a lab holding a big syringe – just in case we weren’t sure what a scientist looked like. And Stacey also meets 53-year-old Richard, who was recently shocked to discover that his dad wasn’t his biological father.
Another man has claimed to be his real father, but can a DNA test solve the mystery?
And Charlie wants to know if she has inherited the gene for Huntington’s disease, after her father was diagnosed with the debilitating terminal illness.
If she has it, then her little boy Cian could have it too… there’s a 50/50 chance and let’s just say, it’s emotional.