I don't know if anyone remembers these, but it was a hooded hairdryer. You set your hair in rollers then eased a plastic hood over them, attached a sort of polytunnel which clipped into a hot air blowing machine. Horribly uncomfortable, noisy and inclined to heat the rollers to a ferocious scalp-scorching intensity. I had long hair that year, and winding it all up into large rollers was time consuming agony; yet still I persisted. It was my attempt at glamour in an harsh arid climate, glamourwise. The next year, my hair advanced to the Venetian Pageboy - hooray! A simple blowdry.
It took ages and ages to wind the slightly dry crinkly-wavy hair of Cathy Ennis into the rollers to achieve the Onion Updo beloved of the Biba models of 1970. But I like to think that I succeeded, even in creating the obligatory ringlet tendril on each side with my - ahem - curling tongs, which split ends with unregulated heat despite lashings of primitive conditioner.
When I last saw Cathy Ennis at her organ recital, I admit that my mind strayed from finding the correct page in the programme (three extra quid; can you believe it?
) to noting that her hair was still exactly the same texture as that with which I had once struggled, with the Biba catalogue for reference.Dear old Pot! She would have had many a triumphant disciplinary moment if she had confiscated many of my possessions in the Sixth Form...
I wonder why those stupid hairwashing regulations were ever put in place? Hot water economy? Girls going to bed with wet hair with no hairdryer? Girls therefore up past their bedtime trying to get their hair dry? It took ages to towel and brush dry many of the more luxuriant manes! Saturday afternoon hairwashing was a Ritual in its way, I suppose... and hairdryers in the Fifties and Sixties were bigger and bulkier and more expensive?
How I remember the mid-week misery of some of my friends.
