The snip.

I love cutting my own hair.  LOVE IT!!  It gives me an immense feeling of satisfaction, that I can take a pair of scissors and just sort that bloomin' problem out without having to fuss with appointments and salons, for NO MONEY AT ALL!

Every part of the process is fun - I stand at the mirror in the bathroom, feeling like the girly heroine in a film who has suddenly realised that her worth is no longer tied to her looks.  You know the bit, when she gets angry, or she's had a tragedy, or maybe she's being hunted and she needs to change her looks, and so she takes things into her own hands and hacks off her locks.  Granted, it's more often a knife or some huge dressmaking scissors, rather than the hairdressing scissors which came with the clippers I bought to cut my Hubby's hair . . . there is such a thing as taking things too far!  So I start at the front, pulling my wet hair down to straighten out the curls, and I take maybe 3 inches off all over.  It needs to be a little shorter at the front to allow the curls to bounce up by my face, and longer in the back. 

My hair is fine and naturally frizzy (I use a dry oil from The Body Shop to get the curls to hold together) so cutting it blunt rather than layered suits best, and if it's loose the curls hide any small mistakes.  I usually wear it pulled back in a pony tail at the moment to keep it out of Little B's way, so of course then it doesn't matter at all if I've messed it up . . . but the thing is, mostly I don't.  I pull it a couple of different directions once the bulk has been trimmed to make sure there aren't any long stragglers, and I check that I haven't made one side of my head longer than the other, but it's really not that tricky!

Today I was distracted by an unscheduled nappy change, and Madam, who stood in the bathroom doorway repeating variations on the same question for the duration . . . so I inadvertently cut a little more off than usual.  So now I'm sporting a nice brushing-the-shoulder-length hairdo.  Just like "Baby" from Dirty Dancing, except maybe a little grayer.