Bulawayo Morning Mirror Edition 1131 - 10/12/2025

MORNING MIRROR CHRISTMAS SHUTDOWN

The final edition of Morning Mirror will be flighted 18 December 2025. The publication will start up again on:-
13 January 2026.

The editor and friends of Morning Mirror would like to wish all readers a joyous and peaceful Christmas.
May the light that came that holy night fill your homes and hearts with peace.

Thank you to you all for your steadfast loyalty to our beloved Country.

A HAIRBRUSH AWAY FROM SANITY

A girl always has time to think when a girl is drying her hair !!

After all it is a daily chore with my fine hair, and it is only during power cuts that I have to resort to yesterday's hair !!

During an idle moment, I worked out that I must have spent three thousand nine hundred and thirty three hours recurring drying my hair during my life time !!

Hair always plays a big part in a Girl's life ....... Mum had fiery red hair like her sister Corynne and the Morton twins were always noticeable at Chaplin School and in the various towns where Grandfather "Stomp" Morton was Mine Manager.

Mum taught me a thing or two about hair i.e. hair brushes need to be washed every Sunday !! (Yawn) That must go into the Jilly Cooper Look Alike Book I am writing called "Life's Too Short!)

But remember in THOSE days, we did not wash out hair every day, we probably washed it just once a week. When I was young, Mother would go to the hairdresser every week on a Friday, come rain or shine ! The only time she had her hair washed was by the stylist and she would spend an euphoric hour reading women's magazines under the hair dryer (remember those awful hooded jobs that blew holes in your scalp and burnt your hairline !!) Eeek.

The very worst were those hair rollers, they were actually metal as we were born before plastic was invented I think. !! The stylist (who was also your greatest friend and indeed confidant ) would take a giant spike and stick it through one of the tiny holes in each roller, normally straight into the scalp !!

One always had to mindful of one's stylist as she /he had many items of torture at their disposal if not showered with chocolates and gifts !

Those perm rollers and lotion were killers, that bathing cap with holes in that they used to use to prepare highlights was an excruciating torture weapon, and those nasty metal rollers They would burn, believe me they would burn,

We did not have one of the nifty hand-held hair dryers used nowadays, if one did not go to the hairdresser, one put ones' own rollers in laboriously, although it was generally a two person affair, and then one would sit in the sun and wait for the hair to dry... Now that is just like watching paint dry, but then life was a lot more relaxed in those days.

Mum bought me an actual HOOD dryer for my sixteenth birthday, but it had a wobbly pole which made it lean to the side, so a stiff neck always ensued after those laborious hair drying sessions.

Hair styles have changed much over my particular many years ... being on TV a lot, I had to attend the hair dresser a lot, and two of my dearest friends were Roy and Raymond Brassington, who also became famous in those days and who could style a mean hair style !!

My worst style was not the Dusty Springfield style nor the Cher style, but that Audrey Hepburn style where one carried around a giant bouquet of curls on the top of one's head.

That was painful, all those pins and clips stuck into your head, sometimes a "hairpiece" (today called an "extension" ) would be stuck in for more volume, and that hair style had to last one for a number of days.

My friend Avril would wrap toilet paper round her curls on retiring to bed, but she was not married in those days !

Each curl was individually and with great intricacy curled and fixed securely enough to even withstand a rock and roll session !!
Those hair extensions were a bit dodgy, if it was real human hair, whose hair was it once upon a time
They did not have imitation hair in those days .... Unfortunately we did not inherit Mum's beautiful red mop, and dull mousey brown is easy to match !
I remember with great fondness Darryl McNeilage who was one of the top stylists, the beautiful Pia, and Yvonne from Mona Lis amongst many great and colourful characters.

Another awful product of the good old bad old days was hair spray "Lacquer" it was disgusting, the smell could anesthetise one for hours but it sure "Stuck like crazy" nothing, not even a tornado, could unstick those curls once "lacquer" had been liberally applied.

We went through some torrid hair experiences like the "teasing" or back combing stage .... now this particular cult would result in your hair taking on a torpedo shape, a la Helen Shapiro, it was great for small people, as with a teased hairdo and those platform shoes we used to wear, we could aspire to greater heights quite successfully. !

But back to washing the hair brushes, every week on a Sunday (yawn) Mother would carefully and painfully remove every single loose hair from the hair brush and then carefully and painfully, take the clump of hair out to the garden "to help the birds make their nests " ...

HeeHoo has his favourite hairbrush that he values inordinately. It is plastic with stiff bristles and although I have bought him brushes from all over the world, nothing quite satisfies his head of hair like his old plastic brush. It is so old and has actually broken into three pieces and I have to hide it from the chambermaid if we stay in a posh hotel......

But life was easy in those days, a girl probably only had one brush and one comb - nowadays one has to have several round brushes in different sizes and if one's hair is washed every single day, surely the brushes do not need to be washed every Sunday Mother Dear