Cowboys & Englishmen

Chapter 1.

'I can never get anything right.' I grimaced, almost unable to look at the orange stripes currently decorating my head.  Perhaps if I closed my eyes and pinched myself, I'd discover that this was just a bad dream. A very bad, hair dye disastrous dream. But pinching didn't work. Great chunks of brassy, bleached segments, stood out against my natural brown barnet. Why I thought I could undertake a tricky highlighting job, I'll never know. One time, I attempted to put together an ikea bedside table. It took me three days, cost me four nails and ended in begging my Grandpa, in floods of tears, to rescue me. And he managed the job in six minutes. Six, measly, minutes.'

'It'll calm down a little. The girl in the youtube clip said it takes a few washes to....'

'To get rid of the tiger look?' I clutched at the wet clumps of frazzled hair, staring in dismay at Donna Collins, my best friend. Sister from another mister, partner in crime, BFF, and right now the person I would most like to strangle. In the whole, wide, world. Bar none.

'I think it said about using blue shampoo. We could try that?' Donna was only half listening to me, her eyes were glued to a half naked Ryan Gosling currently gracing my tv screen. But even Ryan couldn't distract me from this catastrophe. Abs or no abs. Le sigh.

'Blue shampoo?!' I glared at her, wondering what she was on. It wasn't unlike Donna to come out with some daft comment. She'd been doing it since the day we met. Sometimes it was endearing, other times, like today, not so much.

'Might have been purple? Maybe?'

I groaned, eyes finding my forlorn looking purse on the Welsh dresser. I had barely enough money to get me to the wedding in three days time. Let alone enough to visit a hairdresser and have them rescue my train wreck of a dye job. Donna was skint too, having just bought the third pair of shoes this month that she 'really needed'. But in reality, couldn't walk in.

Not unless she wanted to resemble a constipated pigeon.

'I'm sure when you wake up tomorrow you'll look like a sun kissed Californian surf princess.' Donna enthused, tapping her chipped pink nail against the box of 'Honey Highlights'. Right above a woman wearing a pink bikini and smiling inanely. No way would I look like the bikini clad blonde. I was at least fifty pounds heavier and my hair was more Ronald Mc Donald than surf chic. In fact, the more I looked at the woman on the box, the more I wanted to strangle her, too.

'I'm going to have to wear a hat until I can get this fixed.' I slumped down next to Donna, scooping up a handful of maltesers and practically inhaling them. 'But the irony here is that my hair is only marginally worse than my bridesmaids dress.'

We both winced as our eyes fell upon the horror that my sister, Melissa, had chosen for her seven bridesmaids to wear. If I describe it as lemon yellow, it wouldn't quite describe the neon horror of a garment that my sister was making us wear. Ghastly layers of chiffon gave it a frothy feel, and made me look like I'd put on two stone. Melissa described the dresses as exquisitely detailed, like wearing spring itself.

And I wondered whether my mother had dropped her on her head as a baby, or whether she just hated us. My chances of snaring a dishy usher or the best man would be scuppered before I even arrived. And now I had the matching hair do for the fashion crime hanging off my living room door. Marvellous.

But little did I know, things were about to get a whole lot worse. Enter my overbearing mother, one sandwich short of a picnic, one runway short of an airport, and a woman more glamorous than Miss Jackie Collins herself. A woman so consumed with finding me a husband that she sends me a run down of the top ten men she finds on online dating sites, every single week. Now, with my younger sister getting married, mum had upped her game, conveniently having me bump into men she'd hand picked. While we were out shopping, at one of her 'ladies tea parties', even whilst accompanying me to my smear test. I kid you not.