You close your eyes as the blades come together. It is at this point you send a silent prayer to whichever ancestor first introduced the genetic material that gave you curly hair. It hides a lot. And at times like this, it will need to. But it has to be done.

Even the cursory glance you give the mirror in passing, when you remember before leaving the house, tells you that. The ‘thirty bullock bush’ to which your hair has been hitherto compared is now looking ready to shelter an extra herd, and the ends are not so much split as hiring lawyers and deciding who gets the dog.

You are, of course, avoiding cutting it for several reasons, not least being the fact that, contrary to your sons’ suspicions, you do not have eyes in the back of your head and it is going to get messy. Very messy. The fact that a trip to the hairdressers comes at the same price as a full tank of petrol for the car or a month’s groceries rules that out straight away. But, you have done all you can. The brilliantine made the roots nice and shiny, the store cupboard concoction made it supple, even if you did end up smelling like a dressed salad, but the ends still look like a discarded scouring pad after a week rusting forlornly by the drainer.

The thing is, you know your hair. You are trying to grow it and as soon as the dead weight of frizz is removed the months of growth will spring back into ringlets and look as if you have lopped off six inches instead of that recalcitrant fuzz. For the past week you have hidden it most of the time behind an oversized scrunchie but, you realise, you now have little choice. It will have to be the scissors.

You do not, of course, own hairdressing scissors. The dressmaking shears are the next best thing. That or the nail scissors and well, in for a penny… as the saying goes.

You stand in front of the mirror, contemplating the problem. You’ve done this before, many times over the years, but there is always that moment of doubt. You reassure yourself. You liked it short the last time it went wrong… the orange crop on your profile pic was all your own work. Even if it had started shoulder length.

You procrastinate, putting off the inevitable. You can see streaks of silver and they are definitely silver; you cannot claim a trick of the light on the brilliantly shining locks as you had when you were younger. Not that you mind, you are simply curious. You haven’t dyed it for a while and it is half natural, half red. You quite like it… and hadn’t you read somewhere that a dip-dyed look was ‘in’? Just as well really. You are going to go purple of course… but not yet. You’ve decided to save that till you are old enough for it to be viewed as really eccentric. You’ll still to red… if you dye it again.

It looks like the comb-over from hell as you start to part it ready for the shears, a comb-over with copper wire edging. Grab a handful, close your eyes and squeeze… that’s it… you’re committed now. You probably should be, says that little voice… Three minutes later and the job is done. The tiniest handful of glittering orange lies on the floor and it looks, at least relatively, even. Up to the bathroom, head over the bath, grab the shower and lather… then realise you had left the dog’s shampoo on the side of the tub. Oh well, it should be shiny… and at least you can be sure you won’t have fleas.

Half an hour later it has dried. It has also curled up into tight ringlets that look suspiciously like a ‘70’s bubble perm. It also looks as if you chopped about a foot of it off instead of the minimal millimetre-age that you had achieved. But at least it isn’t crisp and crunchy… though the dog keeps trying to sniff it and looks very confused. So much for vanity.