Linda Hall: Squirms from perms would make your hair curl

Linda Hall

I heard something in the newsroom last week that gave me flashbacks to the 80s.

I shuddered and said surely you have that wrong - it can't be right.

No, they said, "I've just read that perms are making a comeback."

Think Farrah Fawcett - fluffy, feathered-back styles, height, curls, curls and more curls.

Memories of the horrible smell, the hours sitting in the hairdressers hoping like mad that my hair wouldn't look crazy. That it would have just the right amount of curl and absolutely no fuzz.

It also took me back to my childhood when I would come home from school and the kitchen stank of perm solution.

There at the kitchen table would be Mum and Nana (mum's mother), one of them perming the other's hair.

I have since discovered that they went to a course at the Boys' High School and learned how to perm and set hair.

Mum told me her hair used to be dead straight with a fringe and she "hated it".

She's been perming her hair since she was about 18 years old and said learning to do it themselves and buying the kitset was much cheaper than going to a hairdresser.

They didn't learn any cutting because the teacher said they had to learn that themselves - crikey. My Nana used to cut my hair most of the time - Mum occasionally.

Anyway, leap forward to the 1980s and perming your hair was the "in" thing.

The last perm I has was an absolute disaster.

It stuck up all over the show - it was bad - so bad one of the reporters at the Dannevirke News, where I was working at the time, told me I looked like a poodle.

The next day I had to sit outside New World selling raffle tickets - I had clips all over the place but still it stuck up everywhere.

I vowed then and there never to have another perm - and I haven't - even if the craze returns.

According to Google there was an early way to curl hair invented in 1905 by German hairdresser Karl Nessler. He used a mixture of cow urine and water (yuck).

He must have had a pretty relaxed or obedient wife because he experimented on her.

The process took six hours - hot rollers were kept from touching the scalp by a complex system of countering weights which were suspended from an overhead chandelier and mounted on a stand.

The first two times her hair was completely burnt off and there were burns on her scalp. Once I can understand, but twice? Brave woman.

It's funny, really - people with lovely, curly hair are forever straightening it. We always wish for what we haven't got.

Well, that's enough of hair-raising experiences - let's talk about spring.

As usual I got all excited about it and went and bought plants.

As soon as they landed at our house the weather turned cold.

On Monday I was out in what felt like a winter's day, planting strawberries.

It happens every year. We get a couple of warm spring days and then, wham - back comes winter.

Never mind, there's always plenty to do, including planting seeds.

It's fantastic to see that New World Little Garden is back - its mission to rescue bees.

My 4-year-old granddaughter was so excited that she got watermelon and her sister was happy with her swan plant.

"We are going to have lots of butterflies," she said.

It's great to see children getting excited about planting food and learning where it comes from - not just from the shops.

• Linda Hall is Hawke's Bay Today's assistant editor.