Straw poll

Oh my goodness, I have provoked a national debate about Grey Hair.

Don't worry, it's not Cherie channelling me, the timing is pure happenstance.
Last week kicked off with scientific news that the grey gene has been identified.
This coincided with the popular historian, Mary Beard, reappearing on our screens delving amongst the petrified dead of Pompeii. For those of you unfamiliar with this lady, she sports very long, indisputably grey, flowing locks. And the dear soul is much maligned for this choice.  In the same week she explored on Radio 4 the business of dying grey hair.
Interesting facts emerged such as in the 1950s 7% of women dyed their hair; 75% do it today. Even the language of the process has changed from "Dyeing" to "adding a rinse" until in the 1970s it became "colouring".

I grew up in the fifties and regularly visited an aunt who dyed her hair : memorably pink, on one occasion and lilac on another. Nothing particularly wayward or punk-like about this lady. Her experimentation was regarded with bemused bewilderment by the adults around me.
My mother took to dying her own hair as soon as the grey crept in. It was a mucky, messy job, it seemed to me, but my mother was a very capable person in all practical matters and nobody once suggested that she went to the hairdressers to get the job done professionally.

I can remember as  an early teen asking my father why my mother dyed her hair. He had a mass of luxuriant auburn hair without a trace of grey throughout his life. He took me aside conspiritorially, and said, "Well, she has to dye her hair, otherwise everyone is going to think I married her for her money."

I have had my hair professionally coloured for the past seven years now. I have been  fortunate in that my hair has always been expertly looked after: first of all by Russell McGrath until he became Australia's gain, and now by Gustav and Jodie who will between them determine the nature of the eradication of grey by way of an embracement of blonde.
"How blonde?" is a question that everyone asks.
"Not a Marilyn Monroe/Diana Dors type of platinum, " I say, feeling more foolish by the minute. "More of a dirty blonde," I add, feeling the colour rising in my cheeks.

I begin to see why my mother opted for the Clairol route at home.