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BORED, I booked my pony-tailed teenage self into a salon and asked for a perm.

"Good Lord, they've turned you into a monkey!" was my father's crushing comment.

I reverted to my natural style. Then the birth of my son turned my golden hair to mouse brown.

I headed for the hair dye and chose strawberry blonde'.

On my next trip home my father greeted me with "Hmm!, Strawberry blonde! Well the straw part's right anyway!"

In those days it was a ghastly business dying one's hair.

If you weren't ultra careful you ended up with a tidemark around the face.

The bathroom had to be prepared as if for a surgical operation.

Plastic sheeting covered the floor and clingfilm clung to my scalp. Anything unprotected could be stained purple and the dye was impossible to get out.

But I was an Abba dancing queen. Mini skirts and thigh boots seemed to demand long blonde hair.

My life revolved around root-growing time and I lived in fear of being seen with inches of contrasting mouse. My second baby was so accommodating.

She hung around till I'd coloured them.

She did not deserve the subsequent fright I gave her.

Months later I was in the middle of a treatment when a friend rang in tears.

It seemed heartless to get off the phone.

When I washed the dye off my locks were a violent red.

Although I spent the day trying one product after another to tame it down, nothing worked and when little Emma was brought back from my sister's, she took one look at me and screamed the house down.

I couldn't blame her - one look and I had screamed the house down too!

When my husband left me for a girl who had stayed au naturelle', I let my now brown hair grow in.

But I felt drab and unfeminine and eventually the question of the day became: To dye or not to dye.' I succumbed to the lure of more advanced colouring techniques and remained content until it was pointed out recently you could tell a dyed head by its all over tone.

I dashed off to buy a product that promised an easy way of highlighting at home.

Lifting strands of hair with a tiny brush was tortuous, and though I stuck strictly to the time stated the result was a touch gingerish.

It didn't look bad in electric light and it wasn't until next morning that the full horror hit me.

Brassy, ginger stripes - not a good look for a granny!

Would history repeat itself and my small granddaughter be traumatised at the sight of me?

I was traumatised myself by the cost of a professional rescue.

Despite that I fear to dye or not to dye' is still a question I'll be answering in the affirmative for years to come.

4:16pm Wednesday 7th May 2008

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