This week over coffee one of my best guy friends reminded me about the time his hairdresser persuaded him to have a man perm (and yes, it was the same hairdresser who cut my hair like Lady Di’s – not). While it’s with enormous regret that I don’t remember him showing up at school on Monday morning with curly hair, it must have been pretty funny. Because even very good-looking people – like him – have a pretty hard time pulling off this particular look. The eighties were cruel, but the worst part must have been the fact that we all believed we’d look better with tight ringlets around our faces.

I even remember the picture I took along with me to the salon of the way I wanted to look. It was a page torn from a glossy magazine, and the girl was extremely beautiful but with huge, pretty dodgy hair. So, take someone who’s not extremely beautiful but does have nice hair, destroy her one redeeming feature, and what do you have? A bad Monday morning in assembly. And again, what hairdressers failed to mention was the fact that the way you looked when you left the salon, all blow-dried and fabulous, was not the way you looked when you emerged from the pool after P.T.

But at least I was not alone. I remember a whole bunch of us walking around looking like poodles from hell. I don’t have a single picture of myself permed, and there is probably a reason for that. But I chuckled all day at the image of my friend with his curls. They didn’t last long – he went back to the salon shortly after and had them all hacked off. We girls, on the other hand, had to wait till ours finally ‘relaxed’, a process which could take quite a while. Ayayayayay, the eighties. It’s a miracle we survived.