Hair Dye

Hair. Why one wonders, were we largely hairless animals ever born with it? For it is nothing but a worry from start to finish, and as we get older, the problems intensify.

Of course, we all want thick, shiny, manageable hair such as we see in the ads for hair products, but how on earth do we achieve it? Even if you are lucky enough to have marvellous hair when young, the chances are that will deteriorate with every passing year.

And then, at a certain stage in life, hair starts to turn grey. The poet John Donne mourned his 'five grey hairs' but you can bet that if if he could count five, there were actually a lot more than that.

Going grey is, as we know, mainly genetic and like my mother, I started going grey in my thirties. It is a pity I didn't inherit my father's genes in that respect, as he retained a full head of thick black hair until he died.

Before my own grey hairs started to kick in – and once the process starts, the rogue hairs multiply with amazing rapidity – I was proud of my jet-black hair. I simply didn't see myself as a grey haired old lady.

Thank goodness, then, for hair dye. The witty Nora Ephron once said that an older woman's best friend was her hair dye, and I'm inclined to agree, but once you start dyeing, you give yourself another anxiety.

You are now into ever-higher maintenance for the rest of your life, as nothing looks worse than very dark hair with white roots showing in a giveaway straight line. It makes dyed hair look so dyed, so ungroomed, and that is almost as old-ladyish as just letting it go grey.

No, you want to preserve the illusion for as long as you can, that your dark, or perhaps, blonde, hair, is entirely natural and that you have been uniquely gifted by nature. And then you discover that the tint you initially chose becomes another issue as, with the advancing years, your skin changes colour as well, and there is nothing worse than dead-black or brassy blonde hair on top of an old face.

My own solution here, and one which most celebrities adopt, is to go lighter every few years, so that when I come out of the salon my hair looks (almost) natural.

It is a big expense, as you need an expert colourist, and time-consuming as well. And then, grey hair problems don't end with applying hair dye. Grey hairs have a coarser texture to your once-natural colour, and they simply won't behave themselves. They fly in all directions and however much anti-frizz you use, it never works. In fact, I have not found a single over the counter product aimed at older hair that makes a trace of difference.

So, what is the answer here? My hatred of dry, flyaway frizz, another old-lady look, eventually led me to another complicated hair treatment: a Brazilian blow-dry. This is a fairly new procedure whereby keratin, the main component of hair and nails, is applied to every hair to make it straight and shiny. This treatment gives you back the hair of your youth – at a price. It costs around £200 and takes about four hours to apply.

For me, it's worth it, though, and the compliments I get on my youthful-looking topknot (all courtesy of expensive treatments) justify the time and outlay.

Annoyingly, it's not just hairs on your head that become increasingly problematic with age. Eyebrows – those two semi-circles of hair above your eyes – eventually cause more concern than all the hairs on your head put together. White straggly brows are another unwelcome sign of the ageing process and once again, what is one to do?

I suppose you could be like the Queen and just decide to leave them alone, letting them eventually disappear altogether. But I'm too vain for that. Years of plucking had left them very thin, so I eventually decided on something more drastic: to have them tattooed. This is once again, an expensive and time-consuming job, costing about £300, and it doesn't just hurt the pocket. Eyebrow tattooing is painful, requiring painkillers. But it is a permanent – or reasonably permanent – solution, and means that from now on, your eyebrows always have a sleek, dark, arched basic shape.

But it doesn't end there. The white and straggly hairs continue to grow in all directions, and so in addition, I have to make frequent visits to an eyebrow bar at my local department store to have them threaded and dyed. And what's worse, they won't lie flat, so I have to apply moustache wax to keep them in place, the only thing that works.

The proliferation of brow bars is an indication of how difficult it can be to keep older eyebrows in shape, but really, few things are more ageing than straggly, uncared-for brows.

Eyelashes don't escape, either. I used to have lovely long, thick eyelashes but now they are sparse and grey. For the moment, I apply so-called lash-lengthening and thickening mascara (and if you believe the claims made here, you'll believe anything) but am gearing up to have semi-permanent eyelashes applied. They last three weeks, and then have to be redone, which will mean yet another treatment to cram into my already crowded anti-ageing hair regime.

It's true that the new eyelashes may make me look like romantic novelist Barbara Cartland of blessed memory, who was never seen in public without her false eyelashes but surely, that is better than bald eyelids?

ends