KEEP YOUR HAIR (DYE) ON!

SALON LOVERS TRY THE LATEST HIGH-TECH HOME KITS

LAST Saturday, at the Daniel Galvin salon in London, a lovely young woman called Saskia was doing my hair colour. She had never done it before, so I asked her to cover up the grey at my temples, which might look good on George Clooney but is a bit barn owl on me. However, I don’t want to go too blonde. That is really important.

‘But it needs to be bright,’ she says, and I sigh inwardly because I know what this means.

It means two shades below Andy Warhol on the platinum chart, with additional lowlights visible from outer space. However, for once, I don’t care. I’m just grateful for the appointment.

It seems like a lifetime ago now, and fast forward to today, hair salons across Ireland and Britain are shut. Hair dye is still the most powerful weapon older women have against ageing and ageism — and no one, least of all me, is giving it up without a fight. Most women across Ireland and Britain have rushed for appointments at the last chance roots ranch. In Ireland, although a direct call was not made for salons to close, the majority of them had shut up shop before stricter lockdown measures were announced yesterday.

I made mine a while back and was torn between cancelling or supporting the salon, and decided on the latter. It didn’t seem risky back then. Now, such reckless narcissism is unthinkable.

Yet who am I kidding? I would have crawled there in my slippers through a plague pit for an appointment with a professional before lockdown.

Those of us with dye jobs large and small know the day isn’t far off before the terrible truth about our natural hair colour is revealed to the world; a gaping furrow of mortification peeling open on our skulls for all to see.

So you can understand the urgency to book a slot. It was like grabbing a seat on the last helicopter out of Saigon, only more important. And a good maintenance cut is vital, too. My hair grows like knotweed.

I had to move fast, to avoid riding out Covid-19 looking increasingly like a head of lettuce.

Is hair really that important? Yes. ‘You are only as good as your last haircut,’ says the writer Fran Lebowitz.

As it happened, the salon actually closed when I was there. Daniel Galvin himself was outside in a face mask, directing operations, looking sad.

‘I can’t believe this is actually happening,’ he said. The old master is 76 now, and his flagship salon has been on this London street for 43 years.

Madonna, Camilla and Princess Diana were his clients at some point. Say what you like about them individually, but you have to admit they are all collectively, thanks to him, the most excellent blondes.

Like most hairdressers, Saskia works on commission and tips. She doesn’t know how she will survive, living with her boyfriend in a small flat.

‘I do know one thing,’ she says, as she mixes up the semi-permanent colour and dabs it onto my roots. ‘I am going to be doing a lot of colour-correcting when we open again.’

An image of woolly-headed Muppets, screaming and beating down the salon door, flashes through my mind.

Professional hairdressers such as Saskia are aghast at the thought of Mrs Amateur getting her hands on a box of Midnight Mink home kit and dobbing it on with enthusiasm, but what is the alternative?

‘I know,’ she says, ‘but one wrong thing and it ruins years of good colour.’

HOWEVER, I think I can speak for many women when I say it is ‘no surrender’ time when it comes to grey hairs. We will fight them with our bleaches, we will fight them on our kitchen sinks, we shall go onto our ends and we will colour them, too. And nothing is going to stop us.

So many things are going to be denied to us over the coming months, but losing our hairdressers is one of the unkindest cuts of all.

The good cheer that a salon appointment brings should never be underestimated.

So farewell hairdressers, you magicians with your tender ministrations, your long-handled tint brushes and your pin-tailed combs. You are the keepers of secrets, the ever-thinning line between a good and bad hair day.

You bring lustre to the lank and hope to all. Lighting the darkness is what you all do, in ways big and small. It is what you have done forever, and we are all going to miss you madly.

I loved my last appointment — I don’t even mind being blonde again. But from now on, like everyone else, I’m on my own.