I has taken me quite some years to get used to, and learn to love, my hair.

But over the last couple of days I have learned that my pubescent distress about the state of my hair back then was far from being the product of overwrought teenage emotions. In fact, I may not have been distressed enough.

It�s my Dad�s 60th birthday in a couple of weeks, so my brothers and I are putting together a little retrospective on the life of Dad. In order to do this I got from Mum about a dozen photo albums covering the period of their marriage in order to cull the most embarrassing photos of Dad from the 70s and early 80s. Side burns, giant glasses, synthetic purple shirts with wide collars.

Now fortunately, in most of the 70s photos I am, frankly, cute as a button. Cherubic face, fine blonde straight hair, big grin. I was a cute kid.

Then there was puberty. Around the age of 11 or 12 there was a confluence of events which conspired to bring about a horror that should never again see the light of day. First, this was 1983-84, and I don�t think I need to say much about the fashion of that time to indicate that even good hair wouldn�t have saved me. Second, a button nose works great on a 6 year old, but not so great on a 12 year old (or a 32 year old, for that matter). Third, and most importantly in this context, my mother and my hairdresser conspired to cut my hair short in the belief than it would thicken it up. Well they were right about that, but the cut which they gave me to achieve it was a crime against nature.

Yes, for about three years there I looked like a boy. But worse, a boy with a slightly curly mullet.

Wearing (and often apparently) a chunky synthetic jumper of bright red, blue and yellow with some kind of scene on it, together with leggings or sweat pants tucked into leg warmers, or when they weren�t available, long football socks.

I had blocked most of this out. While I remember some of the leggings and Doc Martens inspired horror wear of my university years, I can at least blame that on grunge. But my early teens were clearly so horrible that I was forced to erase any memory of them, aside from the fact that at around the age of 12 I hid my school photos from Mum so that she couldn�t purchase copies or put them in an album. Which looking back on the albums now, was an intervention I should have made more often.

When I was 13 or 14 I was allowed to grow my hair out, and I swore at that time � a vow I have kept ever since � that the shortest my hair would ever get from then on would be sitting on my shoulders. Which is where it sits now.

Over the intervening years its gone up and down in length and has varied considerably in colour. But it has never been shorter than my shoulders. Of course it took me until the end of high school to convince my mother that I was no longer having a fringe. She had always been of the strong view that I had a large forehead that I had to hide under a fringe. Which meant that after my hair grew out thick and curly I had to battle for years with this annoying and unattractive whispy curly fringe that divided into small individual ringlets the minute it dried and no amount of hair spray would convince it to behave otherwise. Needless to say I haven�t had a fringe since I left school.

Through university I tended to wash the hair and pull it into a damp pony tail as I ran out the door, it was easy and out of the way and meant more time for sleeping. Not glamorous, but practical.

Then, after leaving university and being a poor trainee, I didn�t cut or colour it for about two years. It got long and split on the ends, and it had good and bad days, but at least it was no mullet.

It�s only over the last six or seven years that I�ve finally learnt to deal with an embrace the hair. Step one, getting a good hair dresser and colourist and going regularly � every six-eight weeks � for colour and/or a trim. Even though I kept it long until earlier this year, I kept it healthy too. Step two, let the colour evolve. It changes all the time now, but subtly, a few more red highlights for winter, a few more blonde ones for summer. Evolution rather than radical change has worked very well. Step three, watch Sex and the City. Sarah Jessica Parker and I likely have very little in common, but we do have the same hair. Curly, dull brown, slightly wild, tending to frizz and capable of being reined in or left pleasantly loose. Watching her on the show have bad and good hair days is both useful for ideas and also reassuring that even with a huge team and budget, even her hair goes to frizz sometimes.

Though not, thankfully, to mullet. As mine never, ever will again.

And while I have possession of Mum�s photo albums I may just have to remove all photos of me taken between 1983 and 1985�