The red-splattered tiles spoke for themselves — this was definitely a crime scene — one worthy of the best CSI investigators. In fact, I am sure that at first glance that anyone would have concluded that Dexter had recently paid a visit. I could see them pouring over the “blood splatters, speculating on the weapons used, the angles of entry and most of all the absence of the body.
It had all started about an hour beforehand when I decided rather late in the day to let vanity get the better of me and I “HAD” to dye my hair before all the birthday celebration pictures were taken. 50 shades of grey is never an attractive look, and I had been somewhat lapse over the winter months in keeping up with my usual schedule of redoing my roots. I needed to banish the grey — and fast!
I had grabbed a suitable looking box of hair colour when we visited the supermarket, not realising it was a new product — both to me and Portugal — where I had bought it.
The new aspect was the dye delivery system – mousse – which I discovered was basically a posh word for foam in this context.
So armed with the instructions which, thankfully, had pictures for those that do not read the language, I proceeded to mix the hair colouring adding the colouring to the base mix — so far so good.
Left the bottle for ten minutes — I always do that — even if it says use right away.
I took another look at the instructions, and saw that I have to squeeze the bottle to get the pump to work. One tentative squeeze resulted in nothing but air being delivered. OK, I thought, this might need some pressure to build up so I applied a few more vigorous squeezes to the bottle. SPLAT! A dollop of white foam shot out missing my other hand which was hovering above my hair ready to catch it and it landed fair and square on the tiles above the bath.
By then, I had discovered that this plastic bottle was more rigid than flexible and, mindful of the time, I did not have available for this, I started pumping the bottle furiously to get the foam onto my hair, the shower curtain, surrounding tiles and the bath.
Ten minutes, and a sore thumb later, I had emptied the bottle and my hair was covered satisfactorily, I dutifully covered it with a shower cap and waited the 40 minutes required for the colouring solution to do its job.
I returned after the allotted time and I switched on the shower and proceeded to try to wash off the hair dye. Normally, a medium flow of warm water does the trick but this dye was made of tougher stuff, warm water — medium flow was not touching it so I ramped up the shower to full blast and HOT! At last it worked. Duly applied conditioner, rinsed that off, and pulled my hair up into my nifty turban towel to dry off the worst before finishing off later with some curling spray.
At that point in time there was nothing untoward in the bathroom — no sign of the apparent devastation which greeted me thirty minutes later when I returned to apply the finishing touches in the mirror.
I walked in the door and I was greeted by what appeared to be a bloodbath. That innocent splat of white foam, and all the others, were no longer white or innocent looking and they had been joined by every drop of dye tinted water from my showering efforts. Even the sink and the floor did not escape.
It took me nearly half an hour to clean it all up and off — yes we were late!
Note to fellow users: “Intense red equals Dexter blood-red!”