For 45 years, I've had my hair dyed at a salon every six weeks. Until now...

I cried the other day. Not just because lockdown now seems endless, but also because nobody can come and fix anything when something goes wrong. We’re on our own.

Case in point: after struggling for a month with the sound quality of lockdown podcasting, this week my podcast co-host and I attempted something new. This involved a massive microphone each, mine casting a phallic shadow on my study wall, some headphones and our producer hosting the show through something called Cleanfeed.

Sounds simple, only Cleanfeed can only be accessed via Google Chrome, which I had to download six times before my desktop computer finally decided to accept the updated version. By the time we were ready to record, I was the colour of beetroot and bathed in sweat.

Once we’d successfully recorded the show, I unplugged all the gubbins only to find that, for some reason, I’d lost the volume on the computer. No matter how often I went into “systems preferences” and tweaked the controls, my computer was mute. In the end, I had to go through the trauma of pulling the plug and rebooting the stupid machine – a process during which my ancient Mac decided to have a funny turn and pretended to lose its memory.

By the time it came back to life. I was in bed, weeping.

We all have to be our own experts at the moment. There are no call outs. If something needs fixing we have to fix it ourselves – be it computers, toilets or hair.

So far, thank God, the plumbing Chez Eclair has been behaving itself and all white goods are soldiering on. Ditto the telly, because if that goes bang then so will I.

But last week my hair had grown out of its last bleach, to the point that I was catching sight of a stranger every time I walked past a mirror. The stranger in question looked a dreary sort. She had hair the colour of a London rat. She also looked sad.

That’s right: call me shallow, but my hair was making me miserable.

Now there are several options for lockdown hair. My niece with the nicely shaped head has simply shaved hers all off and I’ve got mates who are stoically embracing the grey.

This is exactly what I was expecting to do. I rather hoped that I’d emerge from looking like one of those New York/Parisienne intellectuals, my silver hair piled into an academic bun on top of my brilliant head. Unfortunately, apart from a tiny white streak at the front, my hair remains naturally the colour of poor quality soil. It is also limp and badly needs bleach to add some body and oomph to it.

I’ve known this since I was 15 years old and have consequently been trotting off to the hairdressers every six weeks for 45 years. Even when I was young and skint I still went to a salon because back then I’d rather be blonde than eat. I’ve never attempted home bleaching. Until now…

I bought the kit at the beginning of lockdown back in March, and avoided it for weeks. I knew it would involve reading instructions and patch tests. I knew it would be complicated, like installing new software. Maybe if I worried about it hard enough, my hair would turn white, like in fairy tales?

But it didn’t and I was getting depressed, so I bit the bullet. “Geof,” I whined, “Geof will you bleach my hair?”

Up and down the country partners and flatmates have been hearing this cry and, believe me, it takes nerves of steel to accept the challenge. The stakes are high and in our house, the swearing started as soon as the box was opened.

Our first problem was that an applicator brush was not included in the kit. No worries, I found a nice flat oil painting brush that would do the trick. Although, for those who have them, pastry brushes are apparently also ideal

At 71, Geof has had very little salon experience and it soon showed. He forgot to offer me magazines while I waited for the bleach to take, omitted to ask where I was going on my holidays (probably for the best) and I also had to make my own coffee. But an hour later, after an interminable amount of rinsing and moisturising and double shampooing, I had a lovely new head of… well, not all of it is blonde, some of it is a dark yellow, especially around the back and there’s a couple of little bits we missed completely. I can always cut those off.

Learning how to cope with stuff might just be the silver lining to this awful situation. Most of us will eventually emerge having taught ourselves to do something we’ve never done before and I’m not just talking about making sourdough.

Up and down the land, people are turning their hands to all sorts of things: relaying patios, cleaning windows, waxing their own upper lips, but the prize this week goes to my mate Michelle in Hebden Bridge who cheerfully admitted to “expressing her dog’s anal glands”.