Kibworth & Smeeton WI – October 2020
In common with most organisations, we have no meetings and fewer activities to write about, so we thought we would share some of the humour contained in our WI’s Yearbook record of life during the pandemic.
The following contribution from a member was written before that much-anticipated day, 4 July, when hairdressing salons were able to reopen.
When this pandemic is over and I’m asked what aspect has had the greatest effect on everyone, I would answer that it was the lack of access to a hairdresser or a barber!
The wonderful weather we enjoyed during the early part of our lockdown seemed to encourage human hair to grow faster than ever before. Ladies who hadn’t done their own hair for years were forced to resurrect their hot air brushes and rollers to give some shape to their growing locks, even using scissors in extremis!
Wives suddenly had to acquire the skills of a barber to cut their husband’s hair, sometimes with disastrous effects!
Children were stealthily approached by parents wielding scissors when they began to look like ferrets peeping out from bushes of hair.
One unfortunate teenager, whose hair had been trimmed to enable him to see at all, ended up with an acceptable look from the front, but he was not encouraged to use a mirror to see the back!
When I was 39, my hair started to go grey and when a 4-year-old told me that I reminded him of his grandma, that was it! I have been colouring my hair ever since.
Potatoes
Now, suddenly, it seemed that an alarmingly high percentage of my roots were a much lighter colour – in fact, white!
I read on the internet that in order to restore colour, all I had to do was to save potato peelings, which were boiled and left to go cold.
This concoction was then applied to the roots, left for 10 minutes and then rinsed off. I diligently followed the instructions, but when I saw the thick, murky brown liquid, I lost my nerve and threw it away.
I have even resorted to buying a child’s Alice band to control my thatch-like crop of hair.
According to my newspaper the ‘go to’ hairstyle is the ‘bob’ because, if it is well cut, it is the style which suffers the least from lack of attention.
So, in years to come, ladies of a certain age sporting a ‘bob’ will be marked as survivors of the pandemic of 2020!
My comment: You paint a wonderful word picture here. Ladies everywhere will understand the problem and anxieties, but would anyone in their right mind fancy the potato peelings recipe after reading your story?
Then again, desperate times, desperate measures…
Our President’s comment: I have to wait until 12 August to see my hairdresser – I hope that it will indeed be ‘the glorious twelfth’ or I will have a grouse!
Keep smiling and stay well everyone.
Pat Sharman
Look after your mind
