Larry the Lamb, and other chemo stories

 The hair loss that often comes with the stronger forms of chemotherapy is in nearly all cases temporary. Only rarely does it not grow back, but you are not guaranteed that the same hair will come back as you had before. Sometimes it might be greyer; if you are lucky it might be darker. It can even come back a different colour and I was totally holding out for ginger, as a last hurrah of my celtic roots and a 'sod you' to all the ginger haters out there. I think ginger looks great. 

Well, as you may see if you look closely at the photo above, I have not come back with quite the same hair as I went in with, because mine has gone a bit curly. I have gelled it up to make it clearer, but I do indeed have little Larry the Lamb curlicues where before there were none. Which I count as a win. 

Daddy always said that he never knew he had curly hair until he came to live in England, for the simple reason that his hair had been kept so close-cropped back in Rathreedane, Co Mayo that you couldn't see the curls. But we knew that he was proud of his wavy locks, which gave him a certain Sinatra-ish/Hell's Kitchen-ish mash up which must have been very on point in the 1950s. As evidence I advance this photo from their wedding in 1957:

Plus a early Frank Sinatra pic for comparison:

A little bit of ethnic waviness was, I think, no harm in those days. I think it is a bit late for me to express my inner Sinatra/Irish 1940s arrival in the UK, but I do know what I need to look out for. Children are quite attentive to the behaviour and foibles of their parents, and I know that Vaseline Hair Tonic was one that was part of Daddy's daily routine (or possibly just weekend, but I think it was daily). When he had finished his ablutions he would slap on a little glug of what was essentially pomade for the 1960s (or, I suppose, hair-gel well before its time).

So now, like George Clooney looking for his 'Dapper Dan' pomade in 'Oh brother where art thou?' I am going to have to trawl the Internet, or possibly some large chemists in Hackney, to see if anyone still uses the stuff. And here is a 1968 Ad for it to help. Curls ahoy! And possibly antimacassars too.