I always think that feeling when the hairdresser shows you your new hairstyle from all angles in the mirror (awaiting your oohs and aahhs) is the same sort of feeling you get when you’ve just had a baby and it’s presented to you pre-clean up: you want to dash home and run it under the tap to make it look a bit better and a bit more ‘yours’.

I had this feeling exactly 24 hours ago after I had ‘the chop’. As I’m a girl, that can only mean one thing: my hair. Yup, tresses that used to reach down to the middle of my back have been lopped off on a moment’s whim.

To put it in to perspective, we are talking about this much:

In truth I have been half-heartedly thinking about cutting my hair for a while now.  It started after I got a roller brush ensnared in its horribly knotted lengths one morning and couldn’t get it out.  There was no one over the age of five at home and I couldn’t face asking the neighbours for help, so I had no choice but to take my daughter to school with it still in my hair. No one seemed to take any notice. But I did.

Then there’s the fact that I never, ever wore my hair down as it’s so hot in this country.  So was there really any point in having it so long?

I asked the lovely Winnie, who was doing the honors, to tie it up in to sections before cutting it so that I can donate it to a cancer foundation who make wigs (does anyone know any? Google has so far proved fruitless).

Here was the first, rather agonizing, snip of the scissors:

Followed swiftly by a few more (there is something undeniably creepy about about lopped-off lengths of hair) :

I think I must be meant to wear it short as it feels utterly liberating not to be dragging a hot, heavy mane around with me.  I am now sporting a slanty bob which can look very angular, or very normal, depending on how you part it.

My hair was cut by Winnie at Jeric in ION who I think is brilliant and is the only person I would trust with such a huge transformation.  She also knows my hair so well that she was able to warn me about how much styling and upkeep I’d need to be prepared to do daily, in order to look half decent (I have a natural wave in my hair that only makes itself known in tropical countries; in England it’s almost dead straight).

Top Tip from Winnie: When combing knotty hair like mine, start at the ends.  Once you have freed them, then you can comb out the whole hair length.

Cutting close-up image courtesy of Health