It was while packing and throwing-out the last of the papers that I saw the advert: Hair wanted.  A company that made wigs would pay for good quality, long hair.

I was twenty three and almost broke. It was the end of my last university year, hot high summer, and the streets of Chester were congealed with tourists and dust. I had one suitcase of clothes, two big bags of papers and files and books, and a job waiting in the Lake District, over a hundred miles away.

My education had been completed under increasing financial strain, because my father had retired through ill health, and my brother too had set off to university. I had just enough money to take me ten miles home, and while I knew I could borrow the Lake District coach fare from Mum, I was reluctant to ask for yet more help. It seems silly now to have been so worried over the lack of those few pounds. But back then in the 1970s I knew all about money being tight.

Well, what about that advert? My hair was thick and curly and it reached nearly to my waist. It also took twice as much shampoo as anyone else’s and had a mind of its own, like a judge’s wig. Did I need to keep it? No contest. I booked an appointment with the hairdresser. I explained how I wanted the hair taken off and preserved. I pretended I was going to have a wig made for myself, so they wouldn’t know how poor I was feeling. They happily styled me with the short, tomboy cut I’ve kept to ever since, the sort you can simply run a hand through and know it will look okay.

I parcelled up the hair and posted it with a note of my Lake District address. I went home and startled my family with my new short hair. Then I borrowed the coach fare from my mother with a promise to repay her when the hair remuneration arrived, and off I went to work for £4 a week: pocket money, bed and board, and tips.

I sweated a fair few times, worrying that the parcel might go astray, or that the firm might not bother to pay when the goods were already theirs. But, pay they did, eventually. However, even long, thick hair doesn’t weigh very heavy, and its value by weight was not quite twice the cost of cutting the hair and posting it. My profit was less than one week’s bar tips.

Two good things came out of the episode, though.

My mother never asked for her loan to be repaid. I probably should have known that would be the case. And one of the young men who’d ignored my longhaired persona for the previous three summers suddenly began to come up to the bar and offer to buy me drinks. He’s now been my husband for over thirty years, and I think he’s forgotten that I ever had long hair.