It’s one of my daughters’ 40th birthday soon and today after making some more progress on the little portraits I sat down and hunted through some old photos which I was going to use as a collage for a birthday card. Not very original ,but it was all I could think of.

I won’t be there for her birthday which is a bit sad, but I celebrated my 40th birthday by having a party with around 90 guests in my house when I was 42. ( l asked everybody I could think of so that some people would come. They all said “yes.” I was horrified/ delighted and had to empty out all the furniture from the downstairs bedroom to make enough room. It was a ” fashionable squash” and I enjoyed it enormously.)

So next year or the year after we can celebrate together.

It was while I was looking through the photos that I came across one of me at Katy ‘s wedding when I was blonde. I don’t really recognise myself as a blonde person , but I was quite blonde for about 3 years.

It was after I had been in Italy for about 2 years. It was James’s idea . Why didn’t I go blonde and then my grey hairs wouldn’t show, he said. He would help. He had gone out with a girl who worked for Vidal Sassoon, he said , so he knew what to do.

I had never even considered it. I had had dark brown hair all my life and was now dyeing it to cover grey hairs…..but going blonde????

However I had already moved to Italy, learned to ride a scooter, was selling paintings and calling myself an artist. Maybe I should just try it……

So I did . It was amazing. I felt like a different person. As if I had reinvented myself. I believed I could do things I had never done before. It seemed to me that in fact blondes really did have more fun. It was a strange and fantastic few years.

I was blonde at Katy’s wedding and my most vivid memory of my hair that day was trying to straighten it with a kind of ironing tool and I may have gone at it a little too enthusiastically and slightly burned a bit which stood straight up in a horrible frizzy peak. I remember thinking it was hilarious and managing to get it back in order with a lot of some kind of spray. ( my hair is best left to do what it likes , apart from the colour.) It was okay for the wedding….just not straight and gleaming.

I stopped being blonde when the same “Katy ” said it was making me look old. I went reddish and have enjoyed that ever since.

Feeling all nostalgic……..