I am utterly defeated – by my own hair! First, there was the ongoing dreadlocks dilemma: to dread, or not to dread. There were many and varied thoughts about that whole area, I can tell you. The knots. The washing issue (can you? should you? how do you? how often do you? what with?). The cutting-them-out issue (do you have to? is there any alternative? how long before you have to do that to get them out?). The would-I-get-bored issue (which is of course probably the most irritatingly navel-gazey of the lot). But fundamentally, I really like the way dreads look, and having toyed with the notion since I was about eighteen, I thought what the hell, and pretty much let my hair go its own way.

That is not to say that I stopped washing it, I hasten to add. This whole ‘you can’t wash dreads’ thing is a myth. No. I just stopped using conventional shampoo, switching instead to either a combination of apple cider vinegar and bicarbonate of soda or Dr. Bronner’s, very dliute.

Anyway. Fast forward quite some time, and just by dint of not having very much time to spend faffing about with hair, I had developed quite a set of dreads. Mostly, I looked like Medusa, but in a rather good way (though your mileage may vary on that one). I still had loose ends, but the dreads themselves seemed to form fairly easily in my hair, and I liked the way it looked. I kept them uniform by pulling them apart to avoid the dreaded (ha!) monodread look favoured by, well, drunk tramps, but other than that and the odd spot of twiddling, all was well in dreadlock world.

Then.

Oh, then.

Then I decided to blunt the ends.

Which I did.

When heavily pregnant.

With a felting needle.

Over several weeks.

And suddenly, all was not well in dreadlock world. Well, not that suddenly – I suppose it sort of crept up on me over the next, say, month or two, until lo! the hair! it was fucked! beyond all recognition! And all that patience I had celebrated when putting the damn dreads in in the first place seemed rather to have been outpaced by the urgent need to comb! to comb like buggery! Loops, bumps, twists, tangles, knots, and did I mention the loops? I looked like a severe hedgecutter incident had taken place.

The problem is, I still do. Only rather more-so now, given that I’ve brushed out about fifty of the eighty-odd dreads I had. From the front, all is well. When tied up, all is well. But down. Oh, down. Down is another story. Down is a chaos of loose hair, no-longer-pregnant-thus-losing-shedloads-of-hair-anyway chaos. With roughly the crown of my head still dreaded, even the significant portion which I have combed out is still showing an unnerving tendency to lock up with monotonous dedication.

So, I’m having to face the fact that I’m probably going to have to cut the little fuckers out. There are too many of them to just chop the odd one out and get away with still having long hair, and it’s not patience which is the problem in terms of detangling the remaining ones – nope: I just haven’t got the time to myself in which to do it without the rest of the hair having turned into a bird’s nest in the meantime, I think.

But you know, I’m trying to see the bigger picture. One of my closest friend’s little girl has been having open-heart surgery today. She is doing well, and hopefully the worst is over, but it serves as a timely reminder that hair is just hair, for the love of all that’s holy. I’ve been feeling pretty frumpy lately – not enough sleep, constantly covered in some sort of liquid, leaking milk everywhere, clothes both ancient and ill-fitting – and have been thinking again about the two stone in weight that I would like to lose. Maybe this is the time for me to actually take the bull by the horns, chop the sodding hair off (at least it would end the oh-so-boring chore of attempting to brush it all through) and lose the damn weight. Or at least try to. This could be a good thing. I used to have short hair, and I loved it. Now I feel like I would be a huuuuuge fat troll with a little short-haired head, but perhaps I need to get over that and just move on to the next bit. Or something more zen-like and self-accepting.

So, I think I’m going to give it until the other side of the weekend. If I’ve made significant progress by then, then I’ll stick with the brushing. If not, I’m going to give my hairdressing friend a large challenge in the not-too-distant.

As for the weight, well, it’s goodbye pies for the foreseeable, I fear. And you, chocolate: that means you too.

Remind me: there is life without cake, right?

Right now…

:: twelve gallons of wine – twelve! – made, of course, when I’m not drinking…

:: washing drying on the line in a short early-October summer

:: limewashing in the early mists of the autumn coolness

:: cobwebs, chard and pumpkins in our garden at the moment

:: sleeping babies on ancient battered sofas

:: a Malabrigo hat cast on for the littlest one as the days grow cooler

:: a berry-coloured cardigan in progress for her sister, and seeming to take aaaaages because I’ve done a lot of chunky knitting lately, so that 4mm needles seem tiny

:: preparations for Quercus’s birthday (Sunday) afoot, slyly, whenever he is out

:: smugness that we’ve stacked the woodshed full to bursting, and that we’ve yet to light the stove this year, and it’s nearly the end of October.

And you?

So, this post is brought to you by the letters ‘v’, ‘o’, ‘m’, ‘i’ and – can you see where I’m going with this? Can you? – yes, that final bundle of joy, ‘t’. The trouble with playschools is that they appear to be hives of infection, veritable stashes of sickness, and yes, we have all been pole-axed by a lovely little sickness bug which is currently doing the rounds of the small girl’s playschool. Fortunately, for me, at least, it’s not been too horrible (and has certainly kick-started my desire to lose some weight, with a mighty seven-pound weight-loss in one day), but the thing that I particularly loathe about illness when you’re a parent is that you just don’t get to crawl into bed and feel sorry for yourself in the way that you want to. Oh no. You just get to do all the things you normally do, but while feeling god-awful! Ain’t life fun?

So, things that I have learned recently:

1. Failing routers are really, really boring.
2. Waiting to speak to your technical support people while they play ten-second blasts of truly terrible music at you loud enough to distort through your phone’s crappy speaker is really, really boring.
3. Second children do not always sleep more easily – and for longer – than the first.
4. Sourdough bread is much nicer than the name suggests.
5. It is possible to brush dreads out after they’ve been in for over six months, but man, it’s tedious, and hugely time-consuming.

So. That’s me. You?