Grey, my god grey! the story.

I noticed my first grey hair when I was 27. Now this was a no no for a rock chick like me! I was looking at myself in the mirror, where I lived and worked; I had a photographic studio and little flat at the back of my mother’s Georgian one storey house  in Sandymount, Dublin. The deal with the family was: you live and work here and you mind Mummy so we can all go off with our respective successful or useless marriages/relationships and you take up the slack so Mummy isn’t alone on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Daddy’s anniversary and all other events. I discharged my duty well.

‘Fun’ was had in copious amounts

I loved my mother deeply. I learnt the art of feeling both responsible and guilty for not doing enough to make it ok and at the same time yearning to get out on my own and get really drunk.  At this stage of my career I had started to become ‘dependent’ on drink and drugs to have fun and to get rid of those low brooding feelings.

‘Fun’ was had in copious amounts and I still just about managed to have a business in portrait photography and also as a singer. I had been in a successful and outstanding band in Dublin and was unusual in that most bands then fronted by women were usually folk bands or wedding cover bands. We were not. We were a four piece band. We wrote our songs, and we had soul. We were signed to Warner Elektra Atlantic: some might remember them. We went on tour to promote our single. We were good, really good. I dyed my hair blue to go with our gig costumes.

We started out playing bars in Dublin, many of them long gone now. Our biggest limelight stealer was U2 and we shared the stage with them several times. You could tell they had ‘it’. Their manager was prized amongst all us musicians as he made U2 successful and huge. He came to see us one night and took me aside after the gig and said I was not going to make it if I stayed with my band and he could get me an audition with an incredibly successful group tomorrow.

I remember that moment vividly. It was a bit like a movie shot, time stopped and I had to make the decision. Do I dump my friends and go for fame?

I stayed with the band.

Sadly we broke up as did the relationships in the band. The guitarist and I co-wrote most of the songs. He asked me to continue writing with him. I said no.

Instead I built up my business and formed my own band from some of the best session musicians. However there was a fly in the ointment, my drinking and using…

My hair was red at this point and I partied hard.

Jumping forward to now, I am completely grey. What a goddam relief. Years of worrying about what colour to be, what’s the best dye to use at home, twisting my arms into some kind of mangled contortion so I can put the dye on the back of my head, wrapped in a crappy towel so the dye won’t mark the good towels, freezing myself for an hour whilst the dye takes and inevitably the door bell goes and it’s postie who tries not to burst out laughing at the vision of ‘I’m a dye my hair woman but nobody is supposed to know’, staggering back to the bathroom for the cataclysmic rinsing off the dye, where you bend over the bath and nearly break your neck/back, rinsing off the dye that goes everywhere all over the bath, the floor, dribbles down your front and face and finally you stand back up to inspect what kind of ridiculous colour you have turned out, guaranteed to be nothing like on the packet.

Towards the end of my dyeing history I was grey through half my hair so the hours spent with my lovely hairdresser whilst enjoyable and a great way to top up on Totnes tittle tattle, my grey hair just wouldn’t take that pesky dye anymore. I’d glide down Totnes high street under the delusion that my hair wasn’t grey and nobody knew, then I’d catch sight of my reflection in a bright shop window and damn, there was a light border running along the top of my head, still.

I’d started wearing hats towards the end of the few weeks when my hair was supposed to be ok or I would weave strands of my hair to cover the grey bits. But ‘quelle domage’. I couldn’t cover the back of my hair so I’d find myself with my back to the wall whenever possible.  I’d had endless conversations with my very patient hairdresser that maybe it was time to go GREY! But I’d chicken out and as we know it is no joke letting the years of dye and original colour grow out.  So the badger look needed to be embraced. ‘And there was the big question’: was I going to be a sexy, attractive woman if I was grey? Did grey mean dead, had it, over?

The universe had other plans.

Our beloved 1st rescue dog Tuppence, who was the light of my life, had to be put to sleep. Her death allowed me to say ‘fuck it I’m not pretending anymore and the grey was allowed in’. I cut my hair fairly short and waited whilst the kaleidoscope of colours and tints grew out. These colour changes symbolised our changing layers of grief at losing our feisty companion. I wept more over her death than I did for my parents.  Eventually after weeks of looking weird, I went back to the hairdresser and he said ‘right, shall we go short?’ Yes, yes.

Oh it is liberating and fantastique not to have to worry about colour anymore. A short funky cut meant ‘age’ doesn’t matter.

No turning back now.

If I get bored with the cut I wear a wig, it’s fun: go on, if you’re thinking of doing it, just do it, ‘you’re worth it’!™