Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Linda’s whole personality shone out from beneath a glorious head of flowing red hair, and I was stunned into silence

- Vivien Hampshire

I‘m not totally sure why I started showing such an interest in other women’s hair, but I do remember when. It was at the gardening club’s Christmas party.

With not much actual gardening going on in the middle of winter, no lawns to tend or roses to compare, our thoughts and efforts were having to be diverted elsewhere. My husband George had been keen on us taking a cruise, but I wasn’t sure about that either. It all seemed a bit extravagant and adventurous for me, a world away from my usual cosy fire and burying myself in a good book, so nothing had been done about it.

Without the common ground of our gardens to hold us together, the club members had all felt we needed some other way to stay connected, socially, until our meetings started up again. Eventually, having considered a range of options from ten-pin bowling (Martha’s arthritis wouldn’t be up to it) to a dinner out (no one seemed able to agree on a venue and, anyway, Michael was on a pension and couldn’t afford the luxury, and Clara was a vegan), we’d decided on a party. For no better reason than that my house was the most central to all our homes, I was to be the hostess. They’d all bring a bottle, of course, and didn’t expect a full-blown meal. Just nibbles. Well, that’s what they said, but I still fretted over what to cook and in the end probably made far too much.

They’d started arriving around six, a real chocolate-box assortment of characters, from the smooth and polished Caroline in a glittery evening dress, to the rough and ready Peter, in a pair of faded beige corduroys which looked specially ironed for the occasion, and still bearing the evidence of his hobby in the form of an ingrained layer of mud lodged under his fingernails.