Tag: experience

lemme tell you a story, ness rambles, ness talks about life

hair dyeing adventures [Story Time]

nesskingsley

*warning: excessively long post ahead. before + after pictures that are in no way professional and display a love of bathrooms/mirrors/ipads. moulting hair fears. bad humour*

THE BACKGROUND

When I was a little girl, I wanted to have black hair – as black as Aquila’s sister in The Lantern Bearers, which was so black she could almost comb sparks from it. (Or that’s how I remember the description going. I can’t look it up because my beloved books are an ocean away right now.)

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But I’ve never yet had black hair, always brown. I loved the stories where the heroine had plain brown hair. I could sympathise. I thought my hair was … a nothing. A sort of bland, brown, and boring mixture that simply existed.

It took me many years to appreciate my hair for what it was: beautiful. When the sun shone, different strands looked like spun gold. In the summer, it would lighten – if I went outside, of course. Which didn’t always happen. I am a bookworm after all.

But I’ve pondered dyeing my hair (mostly blue because it’s so THERE and shockingly so) for years now. Not because I didn’t like it, but because … I could. And suddenly, quite by chance and entirely by impulse – I had a hair appointment booked.

… and still no idea what kind of colour I wanted it.

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THE ELIMINATION PROCESS:

  • Blonde was ruled out because I couldn’t envision myself as a blonde. Like, the image didn’t compute in my mind.
  • Black was discarded because I couldn’t quite picture anything that didn’t look terrible on me (I’m still saving this for another day … dun dun dunnn.)
  • Blue was thrust aside because a) I’d only feel like having blue hair on Thursdays and not every day is a Thursday and b) I’m a bit quirky but I don’t think I could live up to having blue hair all. the. time.
  • Highlights were tossed because I wanted a CHANGE OF COLOUR dang it! And a big one.

So I was left with either a dark brown (NOOOOO!!!!) or red. I went with the red.

THE ACTUAL DYEING THING-Y

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I bussed, and arrived five minutes late (I accidentally went past my stop and had to ride the bus until it came back. Yes. You may laugh.) I’d call the saloon I went to ‘boho chic’. It was actually in the hair dresser’s home and it. was. fabulous.

Was I nervous? Not really. I was excited because I was going to be a red-head. 

The colour was mixed and applied. It felt a little odd at first, but I really liked the smell. (Wut? It smelled like change and adventure.)

And then it was cut.

And then I couldn’t stop looking at myself in the mirror.

AFTERMATH

I have a semi-permanent red dye in my hair – which means that slowly the colour has been fading (I quite like that about it; new shades of the same colour), the first few showers looked like a blood bath and my towel looked very disturbing.

It’s been four weeks now, and my roots are beginning to peek through – but I quite like the effect.

Do I like my hair? Heck yeah! It’s awesome. I look back on my brunette pictures and I don’t have a smidgen of regret.

A WARNING

At work, some colleagues thought I was a new recruit. So, if you’ve committed a heinous crime of say – putting the milk in first before adding the boiling water to a cup of tea, you could dye your hair afterwards and no one would know you! 

(But I would. You utter heathen.)

ALSO: Don’t go into this red hair business expecting to develop either the bare rudiments of Gaelic or a Scottish accent because guess what? It doesn’t work.

I am, of course, immensely disappointed.

ALSO: Maybe don’t go about telling people that you’ve dyed your hair in the blood of your enemies. You’ll get some strange looks.

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PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

I know, I know – I’m being hysterical and dramatic but I’ve just showered and my hair literally MOULTS after a shower. It’s been doing this before I dyed it so I can’t create a clickbait horror story (‘I dyed my hair and what happened next is horrific!’). But it could be because:

  • my diet has changed
  • I am more stressed than I think I am (I am?)
  • TWIST! My hair always sheds like this and I’m only noticing it now because the house has wood/laminated floors.

If it’s my imagination, I’m going to sue it and tweet angrily about it. And if it’s my reality, I am going to rock some killer wigs. (I’m thinking pastels. ALL THE PASTELS!)

Thank you. I just wanted to get that off my chest and out of my hair … literally. (Too much?)

… and thus is the transformation of my hair completed. On the left – me, in the beginning, before I paid someone to lop my hair off. On the right – me, after I paid someone to soak my hair in blood!! Muhahaha! 

Have you dyed your hair? Did you like it? Do you have difficulty with died/dyed because THE STRUGGLE IS REAL MY FRIEND!

lemme tell you a story, ness rambles, ness talks about life

ear piercing adventures [Story Time]

nesskingsley

It’s partially the fault of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and my liking of magnetic earrings as a youngling, but recently I decided to have my ears pierced.

I mean – lots of people have had their ears pierced, haven’t they? It’s no big deal, right?

Haha.

You see, though I like dangling earrings, I cannot bear piercings. I cannot compute. What if someone yanks your ear and the hole tears?!!!

Sometimes I was very happy at the idea. Self, I’d say, it would look so good. That bit of jaw would be made to look SO elegant. But then I’d look at pictures of piercings and feel ill. Self, I’d say, maybe another time.

And thus it would go on. Until, of course, one day when I took the plunge. ‘It’s a just a prick’ they said. ‘It will hardly hurt at all’ they said.

They lied.

It felt as if it had started as a prick and ended up as a hole punch. My ear was brutally hole-punched. THERE WERE ALIEN OBJECTS IN MY EARS!

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I reacted very well.

According to those present (sister, niece, and bearer of torture device), I was rather pale. I felt ill. Faint. Everything grew distant. I told the lady who did the brutal deed that though I was sure she was nice, I didn’t like her very much at that moment.

I hung my head like an ashamed dog and tried not to think about ears. Or piercings. Or MY SKIN – MY OWN FLESH, THE FLESH THAT WAS MY OWN AND PURE AND WHOLE – BREACHED BY CALLOUS METAL.

The Beautician – a lovely lady who did a splendid job (though I wasn’t inclined to think so at the time) – brought me cold water, a cold pack for my neck and turned the air conditioning on. I didn’t faint, but by golly, I wasn’t at my finest.

So far there’s been no infection, I don’t feel so ill when I have clean (or worse – turn) the foreign objects in my ear lobes, and I will have the experience of Ear Piercing for any future writing projects.

Was it worth it, you ask?

It will be.

ness talks about life, things about research

The Traveller Returns!

nesskingsley

I had to give up several items of clothing, a pair of shoes and an hairbrush, but I did it; with only a handbag and a carry on case I brought nineteen books home with me.

They* say that travelling broadens the mind and enriches the pen. They could be correct.

As I looked out of the airplane window on the way home, I thought that maybe this whole experience was a gift from God, all nicely wrapped up with a big red bow. I’ve been blessed. Very blessed.

A little like this.

I had only ten days’ notice. Ten days and then I was off for a month and a half in the U.S.A. Yes, you are right in thinking that it was all very sudden. And no, no one had died. The real explanation is quite a lengthy one, but needless to say, everything dropped into place just like a really good game of Tetris.

out of a plane window
Have I mentioned how much I love clouds? No? Well, I do.

Having never been on a big ol’plane before, traveling on one was certainly an experience. So was being patted down for a random search. And having my bag searched (these things seem to happen to me. Only my hairbrush handle would resemble the neck of a bottle of liquid and thus have my poor pink carry on case pulled over).

Thankfully, all the airport staff were very pleasant.

I’ve acquired so much material for future blog posts on this adventure (adventure sounds so much better than ‘trip’, doesn’t it?). There were the clouds that resembled ice caps, that time I fainted from embarrassment, that really, really loud canon and the books.

Ah yes, the books. I read a fair few and wandered halls that were covered in books, buildings that were dedicated to books and little nooks and crannies that also had … you guessed it … tons of books (or as the Americans seemed to say ‘a bunch of books’. No. There wasn’t a bunch. There was a ton. A hundred tons. So many tons that I wondered how many butchered trees I was standing in the presence of).

And no, I do not speak of a library (though I did visit one of those quite a few times). I speak of … of … well, a post should be popping up in the near future dedicated to The Place of Which I Speak.

I arrived home (Oh England! You are a green and pleasant land even from the air. Especially from the air) and went to bed that night more tired than I have ever been in my life.

But I’m home and this blog has now been awakened from its hibernation.

Hiya folks!

Ness Kingsley has returned.

 *I have no idea who ‘they’ are. Perhaps ‘they’ are half a genuine ‘they’ and half my own invention.