I got my hair cut and coloured (even though only exactly four people have bothered noting this fact) about two and a half weeks ago. M came along to wrangle Z, because I doubted I could do it with a head covered in foil. As it turned out, I traded in my trailer-blonde hue to go kind of reddish b!@#n as there is no way I’ll be able to maintain the trailer-blonde in my new role of parent. Amanda, my hair-heroine and owner of a toddler exactly one year older than Small Z, gave me some extra colour and peroxide stuff to use in a few weeks, as apparently colour fades very quickly when you put it straight over trailer-blonde.

This morning, with Small Z being very amenable, I mixed up the dye and asked M to paint it on the roots of my hair. I was a foolish, foolish person at this point, because I assumed that when I told him to imagine he was painting the waterline on a boat, and when I said “You didn’t get it on my skin, did you?” as I felt the brush poke my neck and then behind the ear, that he knew what the job entailed. My wrongness was large. He held up his hands once he had finished - they were purple.

“This will come off, right?”

I stared at him uncomprehendingly. He began washing his hands in the sink. They remained purple.

“You didn’t tell me that I should have worn gloves,” he whined, scrubbing furiously.

“I didn’t assume you would decide to coat your hands in it.” I felt I sounded reasonable - which I was, until I stood up and examined the job. I had an inch of dye from the back of my neck around to my ear. And some more around the other ear. I looked like I’d gone a round in the boxing ring, facing backwards. I began to scrub and shriek, while M tactfully withdrew and made himself a consolatory coffee. I began scrubbing using face cleanser and warm water. Some of it came off. A lot didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” M began bleating from the safety of the change table. “I didn’t realise. I’m really sorry. It’ll come off. I’m sure it will.”

I cranked the hot tap on harder, and then did a double take, as the water, instead of gushing forth, trickled to nothing.

“AGH! AGH! Jim’s turned the water off! Help! Help!! I have to wash this all out in fifteen minutes, or the world will explode!! Go and find him.Quickly.”

M went, taking Small Z with him. I began typing this lament, and watched him walk up the back paddock to where Jim was working on a horse drinking trough. There were two small boys with him. I beat myself over the head several times as I questioned why I had become a disaster magnet - the first time in about three years I decided to go back to doing my hair at home - and I enlist a crappy apprentice and the landlord turns the water off. Of course.

Small Z apparently had a great time watching Jim work furiously to try and get the horse thing fixed while my hair basted. A fly bit her on the hand and she yelped, but did not cry. She was entranced by the two small boys and the very large horse. Finally, she and M returned and the water began pouring from the tap I’d left on.

I jumped in the shower and began rinsing. Was mildly appalled by the fact that rather large amounts of hair remained in my hands as I put shampoo and conditioner through. How was this fair? I had done a home job, as instructed by my hairdresser, to prevent Small Z from being dragged along to a two hour appointment, and now was shedding faster than a persian cat in spring. This was not the end of my torment. After repeated looks in the mirror, my hair has now dried. Is it a deep mahogany b!@#n colour? Is it?!? No. No it’s not. Because that would have been too much to expect.

I swear that I ran to the kitchen and double checked what it said on the colour tubes, because my hair is now BLACK. Just like M has always wanted it to be. Oh. My. God. Of the many colours I have been, black is my least favourite, as it renders me corpselike without make-up on, thus making me look about three hundred and seven - which is about how many times I have shouted the work FUCK!!! in the last twenty minutes. I have goth hair. And I have less hair than I had before. And I have purple ears and a purple neck and a dressing gown with purple stains around the neck (thanks again, M…) I have no idea what I did wrong, but in my vast history of hair dyeing, it has never gone this pear-shaped. Gah. Kill kill.