IS IT TIME TO GIVE IN TO GREY?

Letting go of the home hair dye isn’t an easy decision for Sharon Wright

- WORDS: SHARON WRIGHT.

I’m sitting in the hairdresser’s chair and stylist Shelly’s telling me I have ‘perfect’ silver hair under the ash-blonde home dye.

‘You know, it’d look gorgeous,’ she says, casting a professional eye over unruly roots as she snips away at my bob. ‘Why don’t you grow it out?’

Should I? I stare in the mirror and there’s no doubt that my mum stares back. She had wild, thick, coloured hair too. We both started going grey early, with what she called a ‘Mallen streak’ – a dashing white forelock that arrived in our 20s.

No use saying this to Shelly, who’s too young to remember the Catherine Cookson adaptations. ‘I looked like the bride of Frankenstein,’ I explain. ‘And Cruella de Vil.’

‘Oh, right!’ she laughs, busy with that mysterious purple shampoo that banishes brassiness for bottle blondes like me. Already my ‘do’ looks better – but finally allowing myself to go grey? That’s a midlife biggie, isn’t it?