Feeling a little blue today?

I had to to to my local town today to get boring things like paint and lightbulbs. Driving a 55 mile round trip and coming back with only hardware is not rewarding in itself and I will freely confess that I was feeling a little grumpy about the entire expedition. That is until I returned to my car in the Homebase carpark. There a revelation awaited me.

A couple walked past me. Elderly would be the way to describe them. I was initially distracted by the husband's fabulous pork pie hat. It perched on his head and added at least an extra foot to his height. In a dark green tweed, it looked very odd with his other clothes that were not remotely tweedish, but quite obviously he was the sort of man who would never venture outside without a hat that could store pork pies underneath it, and possibly a bag of apples and a thermos. As I stared in fascination at this appendage a bright light came out of the sky that I can only speculate was the sun (it's been so long since I saw this mysterious object that I wasn't certain). This ray of dazzling light beamed straight down, illuminating Mr Pork Pie and more importantly, his wife's head.

She had immaculately coiffed hair, the kind that you have to sit under a giant hairdryer bucket for an hour to achieve. That wasn't the mesmerising thing about it though, it was the colour that drew every eye for half a mile. This sweet little old lady (I assume she was sweet - she might be a vicious old bag of course) had the strongest blue rinse that I have ever seen. It wasn't grey tinged with soft blue, or so white that it was almost blue. It was a bright cerulean shade of blue. True blue hair that was so strong a colour that the pink of her scalp shone through in a disturbing contrast. It was so blue it would have scared the feathers off chicken licken as the ultimate proof that the sky really had fallen down and got caught in her coiff.

This bold fashion decision on the part of the vicious old bag / sweet little old lady kept my few active brain cells fully occupied for the entire journey home. Did she go into the hairdressers and demand that they dye her hair blue instead of using the poxy blue rinse? Has she led a blameless life up until this week when she finally let rip and thought she would dye her hair bright blue for the sheer heck of it, or to embarrass her grandchildren? Is she colourblind and doesn't know? Did the hairdresser expect a tip when she emerged from the hairdryer and he / she realised what they had done?

I've never understood the lavender / blue rinse thing anyway. Why not just have grey hair? Once it has gone grey / white it can't do anything worse to you so why is tinting your hair to colours usually reserved for rainbows considered the thing to do? Is this something that I will end up doing? Please god say no. I don't want a husband with a pork pie hat and I definitely don't want a blue rinse - ever. If you catch even the slightest tone of longing in my voice for even a hint of blue on my head just shave my head then and there and buy me a wig - in pink, with just a hint of lavender................