Welcome to the incomparable Fran Hill, who is an old friend, fellow writer. and a blogger whose site I visit again and again when I need a laugh or another way of looking at life. Or both. If you enjoy her musings (below) you’d really enjoy having a click-around on her site, Being Me, at http://ilurveenglish.blogspot.co.uk/
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I found a long grey hair in my left eyebrow this week. Grey hair on my head I can take. But there’s something about grey hair in one’s eyebrows that says, ‘The end is nigh. Have you made your Will?’
But I will not give in to discouragement. Instead, I will tell myself about worse places I could find a long grey hair. This is called ‘self-talk’ and is a technique you’ll find in all the self-help books.
I will use these chants to comfort myself:
‘I could have found a long grey hair in my tomato soup at a restaurant.’
‘I could have found a long grey hair, smelling of a shampoo I don’t use, on my (dark-haired) husband’s collar.’
‘I could have found a long grey hair growing from my chin at a perpendicular angle, stiff as chicken wire, and poking someone in the Tesco queue in the eye.’
‘I could have found –‘
No, this isn’t working. On a scale from 1-10, if 1 means ‘I feel no differently about my grey eyebrow hair’ and 10 means ‘I now wish the rest of my eyebrow hairs and all my other body hairs were grey’, I’m still down the bottom end.
Did I pluck out the maverick hair? No, I didn’t. I gave it a decent tug, just to make sure it hadn’t fallen off my head and landed on my eyebrow. There was always a chance. But it held fast and said, ‘You’re not getting me out of here that easily’, like a teenager in bed in the mornings who holds on to the duvet with a grip like a vice, even though you’re pulling on his ankles with everything you’ve got.
I did consider plucking the hair out, but I learned all I know about body hair from Jackie magazine in the 1970s. They ran an article once a month warning the nation’s teens that if they dared to pluck one hair rather than use Immac, they would soon have a rag rug where rag rugs shouldn’t grow.
I’m fifty-two, so the grey hairs on my head can only be expected, and they haven’t taken over yet. My hair’s naturally dark and, as long as I make sure the bathroom mirror’s well steamed up, and I stand well back, and don’t wear my glasses, I’m still a convincing brunette. Also, no one’s approached me in the street yet offering a Stannah Stairlift brochure or a sample Tena pad, though maybe that’s because I wear a badge saying, ‘I may look past it but I can head butt.’
All I can hope is that, should this grey eyebrow hair trend continue, it will do so symmetrically. I’m going to look darn silly with one grey eyebrow and one dark one, like Cruella Deville gone very, very wrong.
If Deborah allows me back on this blog, at some point in the future I will report back and let you know how things are going. That’s if the care home has Wi-fi.
stillwonderinghere 
I let my hair go grey a long I me ago. It was quite flattering in face but the very first grey hair I spotted in my “nether regions” was quite another story it’s s a white flag a announcing I had joined the ranks of “a woman of a certain age, the French so politely describe those of us who have reached middle-age. Well, that discovery was quickly overshadowed by the growth of a black wiry hair growing on my chin. I’m 65 now (how did that happen???) and my face and body and the hair growing on it (or not) is the least of my concerns. I have the third and hopefully a good part of the fourth quarter of my life to enjoy the time and freedom aging offers – including not having to spend the time and money I foolishly wasted in my youth trying to live up to male dictated cultural ideals of beauty.
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This is all true and a good reminder that our priorities certainly change along with age and the (unbeatable) price of a good night’s sleep 🙂 I sympathise with the chin hair thing. I’ve had a single black hair growing from my neck for some years now. I tend to forget it until it gets stuck in zips and things and then I have a ceremonial cutting with the kitchen scissors. It’s not my most flattering feature but I’ve grown quite fond of it over the years. Thanks for commenting…
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A bit of grey hair never did the sex symbol that was Thora Hird any harm.
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Too true. I’ll remember that next time I put the rollers in 😉
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I’m sorry to be so blunt, and I suppose I’ll never be invited to visit again; but what about a grey pubic hair? Would you pull that out? I have a few white hairs just above my forehead. They blend in pretty well with my golden tresses.
Love,
Janie
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You certainly will be invited again – let’s be honest, we were all thinking it…I think there are worse things in life than grey hairs but I suppose whenever we discover that another part of the body has begun to openly age, it always hurts. Your hair sounds lovely. Some people pay a fortune for white gold 🙂
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You are so sweet.
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I’ve followed Fran for a few years now and she seldom fails to amuse. But let me say that a grey eyebrow is something I’d gladly live with; it’s the grey hairs sprouting from my ears that trouble me.
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Well I don’t have that problem (yet) but I am trying to think of grey eyebrow hair as a much maligned sign of maturity and wisdom. If I think it often enough perhaps I will come to believe it…
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Always an amusing and original perspective from Fran! Though in this case, very feminine one. From a male point of view, finding a grey hair isn’t the concern. It’s when it gets hard to find hair at all (except in your ears and nostrils) that you feel the chill wind of mortality blowing round you. Especially easy to feel due to the lack of natural insulation.
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Just realised I didn’t reply to this. Sorry Paul! You are certainly right regarding the grey hair thing. I’d rather be a man in that regard. And I think that a lack of hair (in men) has a certain something. A sort of Kojak-like authority perhaps….
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