Capelli

My hair was not my own. It belonged to my mother who treated it as a personal challenge and a daily insult to her desire for control. No brushing; straight in with the comb, starting at the roots and ripping through the knots until every strand rigidly conformed to her standard of neatness; whereupon that deadly instrument raked a precise line through the middle of my scalp. Reducing its volume by 50%, the real business of controlling the mass could begin with tightly worked French plaits on each side of my head; to ensnare any recalcitrant rogue hairs but done only on frivolous days. Then the length of each half was, in turn, divided into thirds, while her forefinger swept up fine neck hair, lifting skin with it and, impervious to my shrieks, started each of the long plaits in earnest. ‘Quiet or I’ll give you something to cry about.’ Ah those were the days. Each plait so firmly rooted against my scalp if it wasn’t for their weight and length, they’d have stuck out sideways. Next came the sticky rubber band to secure the ends. Any unravelling of this work would have been an offence of the first degree. After that came the ribbon. Ah, the ribbon. Not the joyful thing it might have been. No seersucker or tartan for me. Oh no. Red, one inch wide, nylon ribbon which was woven around and between the elastic to ensure it wasn’t lost during the day when I was outside my mother’s sphere of influence. What terrible territory must a child negotiate without a mother at hand to straighten, adjust, admonish. And all in a heathenish land where strange people might put strange ideas into a less, than innocent child’s outwardly neat little head.

Mind you, the close fitting French plait was preferable to its alternative: the Kirby grip. Oh, the Kirby grip. Sigh. How I longed for a pair of pretty hair slides; perhaps little white plastic Scotty dogs or pale blue plastic bows. But no, I’d once, carelessly lost one of a pair and, having sensed my failure to value its ownership, my mother wasn’t going to risk a replacement on such an unreliable and ungrateful child. And asymmetry had no houseroom there. So it was a pair of Kirby grips, which in those times had no little bobble of plastic on the end to soften progress through their journey. I swear if my hair was shaved, there’d be track lines on my scalp tracing the trajectory of those bloody grips.

Little wonder then that this was my first LP