Hair

We all have hair-long, short, thick, fine, straight, curly and the colours too many and varied to be mentioned. Mine, as far as I remember, was always there and was never of much interest to me, well only when my sister instructed our local hairdresser to ‘chop it all off’ and she butchered me!

But to some people their hair was the be all and end all of their existence. Paul was one of those people. You see, Paul’s father would’ve had what he liked to call a ‘high forehead’. Others described him as follically challenged.....he was bald. Paul’s older brothers showed signs of heading along the same path....yep.....the path that ran from the front of their heads all the way to the back. The males, well some of the males, of this family were blessed with mops of curls in various shades all the way down to their shoulders-real ‘woman traps’ as they called them. Unfortunately those with the curls also had the ‘gene’ and as the curls disappeared so did the hair.

Paul was determined that he was not going to lose his hair. In fact he always said “I’ll die with a full head of hair”. Every potion and lotion on the market was bought, usually with somebody else’s money, always ‘borrowed’ but not necessarily with the knowledge of the lender. It was nothing unusual to see Paul washing his hair in the middle of the back garden, in the middle of winter, with fresh rainwater......an old wives tale stating that this would stimulate the hair follicles!! Never was a mirror passed without a sweep, or a tweek and always a check. The hair was the crowning glory.

Paul got his wish though. He did die with a full head of hair but he was only twenty five at the time. My one serious regret is that I didn’t slip a mirror and/or a hairbrush into the coffin with him. His brother, my husband, is bald.....not because of the ‘gene’.......he had a full head of hair until he met me.....seemingly!