Frizz, avocado and Lapland

I was a bit stuck for topics to write about this week and then happened to glance in the mirror and my inspiration was fired. I am going to review hair products and am not going to focus on just one shampoo or conditioner but am going to review the whole shebang. The reason for deciding to change the nature of my blog is that I had my haircut and blow dried yesterday, it looked really nice for a short while, a very short while. In fact if I'm honest it probably only looked good until the stylist put the brush and scissors down, certainly by the time I stood up from the chair to put my coat on it had started to revert to its normal state and by the time I got back to my car it was more a case of looking like I had just stepped out of the hedge rather than the salon. So here goes, my review of hair products, because believe me I have tried the lot.

Firstly for those who don't know me I should probably describe my hair so you know what the products have to tackle. I have very, very, very thick brownish shoulder length hair. It's not straight and isn't properly curly either, in fact it is the epitome of frizzy. My hair is what the word frizzy was invented for. When I was young my Dad used to call me Dougal, after the shaggy dog from the Magic Roundabout, as at that time I had long hair and it was much fairer than it is now. The other TV character that I resemble was again from the childrens shows of my childhood and that is Crystal, from Crystal Tipps and Alastair. Probably though if I had to chose my celebrity looky-like it would be Hugh Fernley-Wittingsall, pre 2003, a likeness that my family have been pleased to point out to me on numerous occasions. I know that I should be uploading photos here so that people who don't know these characters can see what I'm talking about but I find it too painful to have their frizzy bonces looking back at me (also I still haven't worked out how to do it, so you'll have to Google it yourselves). If you're having difficulty picturing it, just imagine a strange hybrid mix of Highland Cattle and thatched roof. Now you're getting the idea.

So we've established my baseline and you've an idea about my before look. There are a miriad of products on the market that claim they can tackle my problem locks and believe me I have them all. I guess that I must be an optimist as every time something new comes on to the market, claiming to be the latest miracle product, I'm straight down to the local chemists, sometimes so keen to try it that I'm waiting on the doorstep for them to open first thing in the morning. In fact I have wondered if the manager of my local branch of Superdrug thinks that I am a rough sleeper as I have often been standing in the doorway of the shop when he has arrived to unlock.

I now have every shampoo and conditioner ever made. But I don't draw the line there, I also have every serum, hair mask, spritz and balm. I have hot oils, leave in conditioners, deep treatments, hair putty, heat protection spray, glossers and waxes. I've tried natural bristle brushes, straighteners, ionic hairdriers, paddle brushes, afro combs and even smoothing my hair with a silk scarf to remove static. I've used products that claim to be infused with natural products such as flower extracts, honey, pearls and all sorts of oils such as coconut, aragan, almond and avocado. Some however rely on science and make claims about the wonderful affect of various vitamins, keratin, pro-v and ceramide. In fact I probably have more chemicals in my bathroom cabinet than Sadam Hussein had in his weapons factories.

As you can see I have some expertise in this area, so I feel that I am qualified to give my opinion. In all my vast experience which of them do I recommend and which have lived up to their claims? That would be a big fat none, nil, nada, zilch and diddly squat. After annointing my hair with all of these products, not a single thing has made any difference. I should have saved my pennies and would probably have enough money to buy my very own island, probably not a big island like Jersey, but maybe one of the smaller uninhabited Scilly Isles. Instead I have spent out a kings ransom and have ended up with hair that would have looked exactly the same if I had washed it in Billys' flea repellent dog shampoo, with the added benefit of being repellent to fleas, always a good thing. 

I haven't always had bad hair though. There was one glorious week in my life when my hair was sleek, glossy and wonderfully frizz free. It was when I went on a skiing holiday to Finland with some friends. It was so cold that all the moisture in the air froze and there was zero humidity, we all know that humidity is the arch enemy of frizz.  It was either this lack of humidity which gave me and my friends perfect locks or else being so close to Santas home.

So my advice to you if you have frizzy hair, buy the cheapest shampoo you can find and save your money. Put the money you have saved into a piggy bank until you have enough to pay for a winter trip to Lapland. You like me may have bad hair for the rest of your lives, but you'll have the memory of one week of hair perfection to compensate you. My other piece of advice, avoid mirrors at all costs, enjoy the memory and ignore reality.

Apocalypse, blackberries and pillars of salt

I was sort of expecting to see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding by when I opened the curtains this morning, luckily I didn't. The reason that I thought that it might be a possibility is that we've had our own version of the biblical Ten Plagues this week here in Cornwall. In typical Cornish fashion our version of the Ten Plagues has been on a smaller scale as we only had four of them, but still.

The first happened when I was driving home from work the other evening. It had been a warm day and as the car felt like a furnace I opened the windows and sunroof and was singing along to the radio, which was turned up quite loud to cover the sound of the wind buffeting the car. I became aware that there were things flying towards the windscreen of the car. At first I thought that there must be a tractor up ahead and that the things I could see were ears of wheat or barley. But then I noticed that as they hit the windscreen they left a spot of blood, so surmised that they were some sort of bug.

As I drove on I noticed that they were hitting the car more frequently and they were so big that I could hear them striking. We're not talking the gentle tapping noise of knitting needles, more the doof doof doof noise of the drums signalling the end of EastEnders. It was only when a few made their way to the inside of the car that I realised that they were flying ants. I closed the windows and roof lickety split and slowed down as I didn't want them to break the windscreen. This might have been overly cautious as an ant breaking a car window may seem unlikely, but I tell you these weren't your normal ants, these were ants on steroids, who had been drinking protein shakes and working out, a lot.

When I took the dog for a walk that evening I could see what I thought was wet marks on the tarmac, like where rain drops had landed but they were actually squished ants. It resembled a massacre. The only thing that could have made it more gruesome was if each one had been outlined in the white tape that is used in crime scenes. Yes the ants swarm each year, but I've never seen it quite like this.

The next days plague in Cornwall may just have been specific to me. It was the plague of broken nails. I broke four finger nails in one day and it wasn't like I was rock climbing or gardening. This may seem irrelevant and unimportant to most people but the one thing that I am a bit vain about are my nails. I have awful hair, poor skin, rubbish eyesight but good strong nails. I find it easy to grow my nails and think that having longish nails makes my stubby fingers look a bit more elegant, so breaking 4 in one day was quite a blow. I'm not very good at maths but think that that's 40%, much too high a percentage to have happened by coincidence so I realised that it must signal another plague.

The following days plague would have seen Noah reaching for his hammer and chisel, as according to the Met Office it rained more in 4 hours than it has done in the last 27 years (I may not have got the statistics quite correct but it was something like that). No chance of having the car windows open driving home from work that day. When I got home I met my neighbour, also returning from work, I offered him 50p to take Billy dog out for a walk but he declined. Its true what they say, there's no sense of community anymore, at one time a neighbour would have been pleased to help out. At least the heavy rain has washed away the ant carcasses.

The final plague is, I suspect, again specific to me and is the plague of falling out hair. When I washed my hair this morning it seemed to come out by the handful, in fact when I cleared the hair from the plughole it looked like a medium sized rodent had shared the shower with me, I'm not talking little vole here, more like a generously proportioned hamster/Guinea pig hybrid. I have very thick, strong, frizzy hair so I can easily afford to loose some without worrying unduly, but it did seem a lot. My Gran used to say that your hair falls out more during the blackberry season so it could just be that I supose, but that would only leave me with 3 plagues and I think that Cornwall is worth more than that.

So what with plagues of flying ants, broken nails, heavy rain and falling out hair its been quite a week. Maybe if I were to be completely honest less a case of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and more like One Girl on a Pony going to a gymkhana. I wonder what has brought these cataclysmic events on and what Cornwall is being punished for? I suspect it's the state of the roads, although it could also be parking prices or  maybe Cornwall Councils decision to close all the public toilets as a money saving measure. On reflection the most likely reason has got to be the toilets. Anyway I've got to go now, I have to clear the pillar of salt off the drive so that I can get to work.

Sealife, buoyancy aids and unicorns

There have been some interesting mammals spotted in the sea around the Cornish coast this week. My sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew-in-law having all been down to Cornwall and together with my Mum we have been enjoying spending time together. We have been lucky enough to encounter some of these marine animals whilst out walking with our two dogs.

On Sunday we went for a walk at the Helford, a series of saltwater creeks fringed by beaches, woodland and countryside walks. There had been rain overnight on Saturday but on Sunday this stopped, the clouds cleared and the sun came out. As the temperature rose so did the humidity and soon I was feeling really hot. After climbing up through a fairly steep wooded area we arrived at a pretty little secluded beach. Both of the dogs (mine and my sisters) were panting well, despite the fact that Billy still has very little fur on his back following a grooming incident (see last weeks post for an explanation of why this is). We therefore decided to go onto the beach to let the dogs paddle and cool down. When there the water looked so inviting my niece and I decided to paddle. Walking boots off, we waded in up to our knees. The water was cool but not cold and felt wonderfully refreshing. We discussed how we wished we had bought our swimming costumes with us, as the water looked so tempting we would have loved to swim.

Those of you who know me may well be surprised by this as I very, very rarely go in the sea. Although I live right by the beach I am scared of the sea. I guess it would be more accurate to say that I am scared of what's in the sea rather than the sea itself. My main fear is sharks and I blame Jaws for this, particularly the poster that was used to advertise it. I remember seeing the poster outside the cinema when I was young and it epitomises what frightens me about the sea. The picture showed idylic blue water with a woman swimming on the surface, unknown to her a shark is heading up towards her from the depths, its teeth glinting horribly. Since then, whenever I'm in the sea, I imagine all the things below the surface that are waiting to come up and bite me in half.

That's why my family was surprised when I said that I'd like to go swimming, in fact I was quite surprised myself. The more I paddled and watched the dogs splashing about in the shallows, the more I wanted to get in the water. The problem was that I was hot; the solution, the water was cool so get in the water. The problem was I didn't have a swimming costume; the solution, go in without a costume. No one else wanted to swim so I decided to take a dip on my own.

Despite it being a secluded spot I didn't feel confident enough to go skinny dipping so decided to take all of my clothes off except my pants, somehow I felt more decent that way. Asking everyone not to watch I undressed and started to walk into the water, before the sea had even reached my knees my sister had stripped off and had joined me. And that is how it came about that 2 middle aged women went practically nude bathing. When the water was waist deep the temperature dropped significantly, but we had to swim or else stand exposed and topless, scaring the seaguls. The water was cold but it was exhilarating and quite liberating.

What we should probably have thought about before we got in the water was what we were going to do after our swim. We hadn't brought swimming costumes with us as we weren't expecting to go swimming, so of course we hadn't brought any towels. My brother-in-law offered his cotton handkerchief for us to dry with and Mum a pair of socks, we blotted ourselves and tried to pull our clothes onto our still sopping wet bodies.

Whilst trying to drag our clothes on we could hear a gentle little phut phut noise. I listened to it for a while whilst contending with a very reluctant bra and keeping an eye on the coast path at the top of the beach to make sure that no one was watching. As I tried to untangle the arm of my shirt in order to put this on, I became aware that the phut phut was definitely getting louder. It occurred to me that the noise seemed to be coming from behind me so turned to look. A little fishing boat was approaching the beach, complete with fisherman and his small dog. My top immediately became a thing with a life of its own and the last thing it wanted to do was be worn. I coerced, cajolled, ranted at it and eventually wrestled it onto my still ringing wet body and in the nick of time was able to stroll nonchalantly down the beach, carrying my trousers, still wearing my dripping pants, with my shirt on inside out, collar turned under and arms twisted and contorted. I greeted the fisherman breezily and kept reminding myself that as far as he knew my wet pants could be bikini bottoms.

Later on that day we watched a seal bobbing around in the sea. It was so close to the shore we could even hear it clearing its nose of seawater as it exhaled. We watched it catch a fish and hold it in its front flippers and eventually eat it. We saw it watching the dogs and then it became interested in a man who was paddling. It was amazing to see it so well but also terrifying to think that a bit earlier we had also been in that very same sea.

The next day we saw another seal and a pod of five dolphins whilst we were doing another walk further up the coast. My nephew-in-law had just said that he'd like to see another seal when I spotted the dolphins which were swimming parallel to the coast so we had a good view of then for quite a while. For the rest of the day it's a miracle we didn't fall over the cliff into the sea as none of us were looking where we were going as we constantly had our eyes turned to the left searching the sea for whales, turtles, mermaids and sharks. In fact we might have walked past all sorts of amazing things on the inland side of the walk as we were so focussed on the water. If we had looked to our right we might have seen herds of unicorn grazing amongst flocks of dodos but now we will never know.

So an enjoyable visit from my family this week where we spotted some incredible sealife and discovered:

• You should always plan ahead and be prepared for spontaneous acts
• White pants aren't the best for maintaining modesty when wet
• When not confined by a swimming costume buxom women have 2 natural buoyancy aids
• If you keep your eyes peeled its amazing what you see (apologies to the fisherman who I suspect saw more than he anticipated)
• Wet bodies and dry clothes make dressing in a hurry nigh on impossible
• Even people you have known your whole life can still surprise you
• I think my sister may well have been a stripper in a previous life as she got her clothes off in a nano-second
• I have the best family, as not only did they look away when requested, there were no incriminating photos taken and they didn't hide our clothes.

The jury is still out on the merits of going commando though.

Orange peel, Dog clippers and GI Jane

Something bad has happened, something really, really bad.

The first time I used those words was many years ago and my family and I were on a coastal walk. We had stopped for a snack and were sat on top of the cliffs having some reshments and relaxing. We had a drink and an orange each and sat enjoying the view. Before we had stopped I'd been eating a piece of chewing gum, so after I had peeled my orange I put the orange peel on the grass next to me with the chewing gum on top. I ate my fruit then lay back in the sun. That's when the really, really bad thing happened. Mum, who was sitting next to me also decided that she too would like to sunbathe. As she lay back onto the grassy bank I realised that she had lain ontop of my orange peel and chewing gum. Not wanting to just come right out and say

"Did you know, you have chewing gum stuck to the back of your favourite blouse?"

I decided to break it to her a bit more gently, which was the origin of the now infamous family phrase of;

"Something bad has happened, something really, really bad".

I guess all families have these phrases and sayings that mean a lot to them, but to outsiders don't make a lot of sense. For instance other phrases we often use are;

"Don't put the plug in your mouth"

"I'll just avail myself of the facilities" and

"You're not my mum". But those are tales for another day.

I believe that it's repeating phrases like these, and the shared experiences that brought them about, that help to cement family relationships.

So what was the "really, really bad thing" that happened this week? Let me explain.

When I was made redundant one of the ways I decided to save money was by buying some dog clippers so that I could groom my dog Billy myself and not have to take him to expensive grooming parlours to be spruced up. I clipped him a couple of months ago and he looked OK so I decided to do it again as my sister, brother-in-law, niece and her husband are coming to visit this weekend and I thought that Billy was due a haircut.

Billy is a Westie and unlike some of his breed, he has always preferred a scruffy, shaggy hairdo. We live on the coast, near a surfing beach and I think that Billy bases his style on the surfer look. If he was a human he would have sun and saline bleached, shoulder length, tousled hair. He'd go for the "undone" look and would probably be wearing board shorts, an ethnic inspired tatoo and flip flops. But this week I decided to ignore his protests and smarten him up prior to our visitors arriving.

I gave him a brush then got the clippers out. The instructions said to use the shortest setting on his ears, which I did and they looked OK. Now bearing in mind it's summer, I decided to give him a shorter haircut than normal to try and keep him cooler. As his ears didn't look too bad on the short setting I thought it would be alright to use it on his body. So I clipped off a line of fur starting at his collar and continuing down to his tail. It wasn't very even so I went over it again a couple of times. Yes the instructions tell you only to go over the same area once, but I like to think that these instruction manuals are more suggestions than the law. A bit like the arrows in carparks, which I interpret as optional guidelines. So I ran the clippers down Billys back once, twice, certainly no more than nine times, trying to get the length even, his hair getting shorter and shorter each time. I then sat back to admire my handywork which was when I realised that something really, really bad had happened.

And that is how I now have a dog with a three inch wide bald strip running the length of his body. I had wanted Billy to look smarter and to feel cooler for when my family arrived this weekend, but actually he looks like he's got mange and I can't take him out in the sun for fear that he'll get sunburn. Less surfer chic and more like a monks tonsure. Less Seann Walsh, more GI Jane. Less Westie, more Chinese Crested.

It's 4 days now since Billys extreme makeover and its not really looking any better yet. There's only 2 more days before the first of the guests arrive so I'm not holding out much hope that he'll be back to normal by the weekend. How come when I shave my legs the hairs are long enough to plait by the next morning, but cut my dogs hair a little shorter than intended and he looks like he's been scalped a week later? I don't honestly think that Billy is really trying to get it to grow, so its his own fault if my sisters dog laughs at him.

When I was made redundant I did consider training to become a dog groomer, I think that the canine world will be rejoicing that I found alternative employment (by the way, the new job's going OK).

Right I better go now, I have an item for sale on eBay and its getting near to the end of the auction time. So if you want a little used set of dog clippers you'd better get your bid in soon or you may miss out, and if you do get them don't forget to read the instructions.