hair and clothes

During the past few weeks, especially aboard the ship, I had to attend several formal dinners. The ship’s instructions always specify “cocktail dress for women, tuxedos for men.” Last year, my mother telephoned me in Chile to warn me about this detail, and I ended up going shopping last minute in Santiago. My father always gets away with just a jacket, shirt and tie, but I decided to go for the different this time around. Since we were in an appropriate part of the world, I asked my mother to send me her old prom dress. My mother went to secondary school in the mid 60s, in the South Pacific, and she has a few interesting outfits to prove it, none of which she ever wears. so I decided to appropriate the mumu and use it for my formal evenings. This had the strange result of turning me into an Asian Lady Magnet. Asian ladies, both crew and guests kept coming over to admire my outfit, and were particularly amazed when I told them it was my mothers, and over a decade older than I am. I guess seeing a white person dressed in Polynesian traditional clothing is strange, but imagining that one did so 40 years ago must be mind boggling.
My father approved of the mumu, but not of my hair. Working 7 days a week in London for the past 8 months meant that some things just didnt get done, and cutting my hair was one of those. Pulled down straight, it was rapidly approaching my waist, and in the humidity of Auckland or Sydney, it was a bit frightening. So my father hauled me off to the hairdressers and ordered them to cut off what they saw fit. I guess he didn’t realise that in Australia they would have their own way of dealing with hair. Not only did 10 inches get chopped off, but I got a special treatment, which seemed to consist largely of salt, that is guaranteed to make my hair look like I just got back from the beach. Walking about Sydney, it looks pretty cool, I have to confess. But I am starting to wonder- what will it look like in the grey of a Northern European winter?