Wednesday 3 March 2010

With A Song In My Heart & A Tong In My Hair

A chance comment on another blog reminded me of something...

...Back in 1962, when I was very young, and even shorter than I am now, a few significant things happened...

My beloved old grandfather died, and just a few weeks later, my beloved new brother was born.

My teachers that year were named Miss Flewitt [Miss Fly-By-Night, Dad called her!] and Mr Guilder.

Telstar was launched, and Marilyn Monroe died [I remember those events - but little other 'world news']

The 'Big Freeze' began in December, and lasted till March 1963 [oh I do remember that. It was so cold]

I remember that we had a car accident, and skidded into a ditch. A lady with a chauffeur in a fur coat [the lady, not the chauffeur] stopped to help us, and I had my first taste of real coffee from her vacuum flask. And apparently I asked her if the coat was mink [it was!]

But one song was popular that year, on the radio a lot, and it stuck in my little brain. I went round singing it all the time. I didn't realise the name would be so significant for me in later life!

But there was a brief spell during that year when I stopped singing...

waving dog I had dead straight hair, and my Mum lamented this fact to her hairdresser. The 'professional' said "Oh, Mrs Hall, if you just train it, it will wave by itself" [which sounded to me like teaching a pet dog to perform tricks]

Then the wretched woman sold Mum some amazing curling tongs like these.

The 'blades' were metal, the handles heat-resistant plastic.

tongs You had to leave the ends in the coal fire till they were hot - then wind your hair round them and the curls would 'set'.

It was barbaric!

I was a fidgetty little thing, and as I wriggled, inevitably the tongs touched my skin and I got burned.

After a couple of attempts to turn my straight locks into Shirley Temple ringlets, when I ended up weeping, with singed frizz and a blistered neck, Mum admitted defeat.

shirley temple

[on reflection, she was in the latter stages of a difficult pregnancy, and probably not thinking straight. But I did not understand that at the time]

NB that picture is Shirley, not me!

I suppose I should be grateful Mum never came across this ad...

 

What would Elf'n'Saty [as one of my pupils spelled it] say about those tongs now? A child would probably be taken into care and her parents fined for such cruelty.

Those were the days...

4 comments:

  1. To disguise my dead straight hair my mum used to put it up in a bun. My hair was pulled up, severely, to the very top of my head and then somehow wound round a thing not dis-similar to a ring doughnut. My hair was pulled very tight, there were lots of hair pins involved, and I HATED it, my head was so sore. From memory this happened most usually on Sundays, before I was packed off to sunday school at the local church, to give my mum some peace and quiet!

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  2. That sounds horrific! I'm sure they would have been condemned immediately by the dreaded H and S.

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  3. I was a curly locks and that song always makes me smiile, as my Dad was a Bobby and me and mum were always his girl and she used to sing it all the time.

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  4. This post reminds me of an episode of the Waltons where the lady in the shop (name, name?) procures a hairdressing machine and Mummy Walton or Granny Walton or somebody gets their head singed? And goes about in a head scarf until it grows out. Which is what I always wanted to do when my mother got her hands on my very straight hair!

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