‘Have the vaccine, get great hair’

What could be the cause of Trudy’s new hair growth? Vaccine, menopause, something else? By Christine Manby

(Illustration by Tom Ford)

Finally, a haircut. After six weeks of daily chats with an answerphone, I got through to my hairdresser Emily last Wednesday. She had a space in her extremely busy schedule that very afternoon. “Otherwise, I can’t fit you in until July,” she said. I dropped everything and made a dash for the salon. I wasn’t going to make the mistake I made at the beginning of December, when I thought it would be safe to book an appointment for the week before Christmas. Who would have believed back then that we were about to plunge into a long winter of hairdresser-free hell? If lockdown has taught me anything, it’s that she who hesitates better be able to cut her own fringe. I will never again pass up the opportunity for a cut and blow-dry. Who knows if July will even happen this year?

Settling down in Emily’s chair, I faced the reality of five months without professional grooming. Zoom has made experts of all of us when it comes to lighting and flattering angles but there’s only so much a ring light and stacking your laptop on the sourdough cookbooks can do. Around the beginning of this year, I started to be increasingly distracted by the lines on my face when I saw myself on screen. Especially if I was Zooming with Saskia, proprietor of #Yne, who has an unnaturally smooth forehead even for a 27-year-old. She puts it down to a healthy diet, lots of exercise and thinking only good thoughts. The latter being something I find particularly hard, as the #Yne Post-It fiasco underlined.

In any case, there’s only so much diet and exercise you can do once you reach your late forties. Last month, I had a conversation with my best friend Liz about “tweakments”. Was it time to get fillers at last? We both agreed we were too frightened of something going wrong.