EMMA JOHNSON

Assuming we are not invaded by aliens (after the 14 months we have had, I am ruling nothing out), by the time you read these words I will be in the salon chair, my head covered in more foil than at the finish line for the London marathon, a variety of dyes doing their thing on my long-neglected locks.

I will be boring my hairdresser with the details of everything I have cooked/eaten over the past four months and which series I have binge-watched on Netflix. It would be a little premature of her to ask me if I am going anywhere nice on my holidays.

Yes, after what has felt like the longest winter in history, our great reopening of society got underway on Monday and boy was I feeling ready for it.

Except I was far from looking ready. With my pasty skin, grey roots, split ends, stubby eye lashes and bare nails, I am not really fit for public consumption.

Not by my own exacting standards anyway.

Over the past four or five months, beauty has very much taken a backseat in my life. With nowhere to go and no-one other than my husband, the cats and a few people in Lidl to see, the pressure to look good has been well and truly off.

Even more so than it was in the first lockdown, because unlike last spring when masks were barely on our radar and we were basking in Mediterranean-like sunshine, this time around our faces have been covered and the icy temperatures afforded us the anonymity provided by hats, gloves, scarves and puffer coats.

But now shops are open, gyms are open, we can have guests in our garden and we can eat and drink with our favourite five other people outside and, crucially, temperatures are beginning to creep up.

Moreover, I am just fed up of looking like I don’t care about my appearance. Because historically, I have cared very much.

I like to present myself well. I like to wear nice clothes, nice shoes, have well-applied make-up and blow-dried hair. I even write a fashion column for a living.

And yet, like so many others, I have spent the majority of the past year wearing the same dozen or so items. Most of them Lycra based.

There was a brief moment in the sun (quite literally) late last summer where I went out and dressed up but it felt like it was over almost before it began.

These days I get up each morning, go to my wardrobe, see the all the dresses, the blouses, the midi skirts and pretty cardigans that have sat untouched on their hangers for so long now there is dust on the hooks... and I reach for a grey marl sweater.

I am not a grey person but that is the way I have felt in recent months and not just because of the silver streaks at my temples.

Speaking to a friend the other day, I reflected that I felt like I had lost my personality a little in the lockdowns. Now I realise the reason for this is that my personality is enmeshed with the clothes I wear.

And prior to the pandemic they were not stretchy ones – not since the bandage dresses of the early Noughties anyway.

Fashion has always been my go-to. My thing. I love to look at nice clothes, to put outfits together, to think about which earrings go with what blouse, whether that skirt would look better with sandals or trainers.

In recent months, all my clothes-based decisions have been made on just two grounds: is it comfy and will it keep me warm enough?

Call it vanity if you want but the shops I patronise, the designers I desire, the jewellery I pick, my hair colour, even the lip gloss I slick on and the fake tan I would normally be slathered in by now, all of these things are part of who I am.

Now, with life starting to return to normal, I am eager to find myself once more.

And that process starts with finding myself blonde again in a couple of hours’ time.

FOILED AGAIN: Emma in the chair at the salon