Monday, February 05, 2007

Hair Flatteners

Eldest daughter wanted to buy something nice for herself with her Orange money. That is money that she earned from doing the Orange advert, not money that has been dyed in the wash.

She had been talking for some time about GHD's. Hubby, whenever these are mentioned, makes one of his slightly slightly irritating, but nevertheless somewhat endearing "repeated jokes" jokes, by insisting on calling them JCB's. For those of you who don't know what they are, they are as Hubby's name for them would suggest, heavy duty. Heavy duty straighteners. Or flatteners perhaps.

Now call me old fashioned please. But will someone please tell me why, when I have spent a lifetime bouncing up my limp hair, that was a given the tag "as curly as candles" by my Mum's hairdresser when I was a child, but which thankfully seemed to develop a bit more life of its own after having children, would I ever want to straighten, smooth out, or flatten my hair?

Everytime I go to the hairdresser, I spend half an hour when I get home "unflattening" out my hair and putting it back to "normal". Hubby cannot understand that one either. "Why do you keep going back and spending money when they don't do what you want?" he asks. "The cut's good" I say.......

One of my oldest friends has the same problem. (That is old because I have known her a long time, not old because she is old. In fact in SAY years only in her 20's (SAY)). "Just been to the hairdressers," she will say on the phone. "How is it?" I ask. "Flat", she says.

The modern generation thinks otherwise. They therefore cannot understand why I am not leaping for joy at the results of the JCB's, or thinking that they are the best thing since sliced bread. In fact, in my humblest humble opinion the idea of straight straight hair is actually slightly worse than plastic white bread.

"But they can be used for curling hair" says Eldest Daughter. That's why I got them.

Now, let me get this straight. Pardon the very bad pun. You want to use straighteners to curl?

Apparently so. And indeed, weirdly they seem to do a very good job at doing the job they weren't originally designed for. The ringlets they produce look great.

Just don't EVER, EVER, EVER ask me to have GHD'd or otherwise FLATTENED hair!

p.s. If you came here via Beccy's post from the fun Monday thingy then thank you Beccy! What a lovely tribute you wrote about me. I am very honoured.

Beccy and I, we have discovered, not only started blogging within a day, not only fight for the computer to blog, and fight for the tv to watch that dreadfully written but addictively ridiculous soap from down under, we also, I realised recently, moved to Ireland in the same year. She moved there to marry an Irish man. I moved there because my English hubby was moved there with his job. She moved to the South and sunny Dublin. I moved to the North, where amongst other things, I discovered that lots of people there had more than three children. So, not to feel left out, we had a fourth child while there and conceived number five just before leaving (we think). (Well, the "think" is that we think she was conceived there. Her presence thereafter is undisputed.)

Beccy stayed in Ireland, and still lives there. We had to move back home after four years. I found Beccy when looking for Irish bloggers - feeling nostalgic about my time in Northern Ireland. I then added her as my first person on my "have a look at these blogs list". She became my first blog friend, and I have read her posts every day since. One day I hope to meet her in person! in the meantime, take a look at why she called her blog the inspired name of "Peppermint Tea"!

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

I sold some peppermint tea today. The customer was not very polite at all.

sallywrites said...

Oh Ignorminious how mean of them! Have a drink and forget them!

FH said...

I had 'flattened' hair all my life and they are getting wavy!:D But I like it wavy as well though,little bounce doesn't hurt,does it?!:))

Anonymous said...

well as they say in neighbous :"pfff fuddy duddy!"
hehe sorry bloggers, it's an in-family joke :-)
but i love my ghds and they are fab curlers!
my hair is "flat" anyway!and that's because of the candle genes!
love you anyway
xxxxxxx

ChrisB said...

Glad to see you back

sallywrites said...

Oh yes, just to clarify a bit of confusion.........

Hubby didn't understand the "curly as candles" joke. He for some reason thought of those curly candles.

I think however that my Mum's hairdresser was talking about the straight Church variety!!!

Very straight, flat hair!

The very nice man said...

Hi, Sally,
So you might well be jellous of my hair when I was 3 years old (see last Monday's post on the firefly)?? Listen, you look fabulous!

Beccy said...

Ahhh Sally, that was so sweet, thank you very much.

sallywrites said...

Very Nice Man -

Indeed your hair was gorgeous aged 3, but thank you - I love you for that comment!

Beccy

A pleasure!

Sally

sallywrites said...

Asha - Bounce certainly does not hurt!!

Em - Exactly! So flatten not more!

Chris - Couldn't stay away for long!

Sally

Kate said...

I'm in the first trimester of pregnancy and have noticed that my hair has changed... hope it comes back the way it was though (nice and wavy.

Unknown said...

Sally, i`m addicted to Neighbours(from my time in hospital, honest), but i haven`t got any hair.
Glad you liked the post. xx.
Sh*t, don`t tell anyone about Neighbours!

sallywrites said...

Kate - I expect your hair will be as nice if not nicer after the pregnancy. All those extra hormones seem to do good things rather than bad in my experience. The first trimester is bad because you just feel run down in every way. But wait until you are 12 weeks and THEN..............

John -Don't worry your secret about the fact that you watch Neighbours is safe with me and the 50 or so people that read my blog every day......

Cheaper not to have hair!

Sally

Unknown said...

Thank you Sally, i`ll sleep much better tonight.

Anonymous said...

Hair!
Its another world isnt it!
I remember hair.
http://www.meredic.btinternet.co.uk/six.htm

sallywrites said...

Meredic

You had a lot of hair in 1975!! What's it like now?

Momo said...

Red flushed into my cheeks and my eyes sparkled...reading your post! I'm from the other generation for sure though I don;t need a "technical machine" to make my hair look flat...is flat enough!

Anonymous said...

"Everytime I go to the hairdresser, I spend half an hour when I get home "unflattening" out my hair and putting it back to "normal"."

Me too!

I keep vowing to tell them I prefer it wavy. Maybe one day I'll manage it.

But God, ironed hair is just so dull! It looks good on the right-shaped face, but when you have a long thin face and a long nose (me), it just makes you look like a droopy horse.

Norma said...

I haven't seen this expression "flat" hair, but do see it on the young women--just like in the 70's when they "pressed" or "ironed" their hair. I had a very bad perm 2 years ago, and would straighten it, but it still had body and wasn't flat. Now it's short-short, drip dry.

Thanks for your visits and comments.

Anonymous said...

Hi Sally!

I definitely agree with you that hairdressers are nightmare 'flatteners' BUT I'm with your eldest daughter as far as ghds go. You need educating - ghds don't just flatten. They shape, defrizz and even curl!! Couldn't live without mine!

sallywrites said...

Momo - So glad you agree!

Clare - Do you think that they train hairdressers that way, or do they just recruit the ones who look at anyone over the age of thirty with a sense of pity (because they have no choice other than to make such persons look as old as they clearly should)?

Debbie - O.k. Fair enough about shape, defrizz and curl, but I still don't get the point of having straightened hair!

Norma - "Flattened" is a Sally expression, not an Englishism. It's just the way that ultra straight dampenened down hair looks and makes me feel!!! FLAT!!! I had a perm in the 70's, and that was pretty disasterous too!!