Silver Scream Goddess — Gráinne Maguire

My first haircut post lockdown was as traumatic as I imagined it would be. It wasn't just the unflinching lighting in the hair salon, the social hell of small-talk and the agony of me and the hairdresser forced to stare at my reflection in the mirror like a magic eye painting; it was the eight months of grey roots cackling back at me.

The last gift of lockdown, being able to literally measure the passage of time, by the decaying pigment of my locks. I looked like some sort of dying underwater sea creature that's been washed up on a beach.

I miss when going to the hairdressers was a glamorous treat; bouncing in wondering what makeover will take place today. Now with grey hair it feels like sad follicle admin, a tax I have to pay for not being dead yet. I walk in feeling like a sad trombone, as if I have in some way let the hairdresser down. “OK put down the exciting frivolous ombre mermaid highlights and sober up”, my hair bellows. “You can experiment with honey highlights with the other kids but right now you need to fire up the cement mixer. We're aiming for enough chemicals to cover the grey without using so much that my hair gets the texture of an old carpet- have fun!” There is no dazzling transformation, just the relief I no longer look like a Halloween witch. A brief reprieve from looking like the bird lady in Home Alone 2.

There is no pleasing lie to explain why your hair is turning grey, only the reality that your body is slowly dying. There is no evolutionary reason, no surprising upside, unless it's the ability to blend in with other grey things, getting greyer and greyer until you completely vanish. Other features we associate with aging can have reassuring mitigating factors; anybody can have creases around their eyes at any age if your face is shaped like that, freckles can be a sign of youth or skin damage, but grey hair is frostbite from the cold hands of death running its fingers through over your locks. It is the beginning of the literal end.

It's not reassuring to know that it’s cool for Gen Z influencers to dye their hair grey. They're just cosplaying old age - it works in contrast to their jutting cheekbones and dewy skin. It's a cute shrug, not the hard slap of reality. A teenage girl can wear a billowing flowery dress with a shapeless cardigan and look edgy; beyond thirty-five and it looks like you're an understudy in a touring production of Mrs. Brown’s Boys.

I know there are other people who fully embrace their grey hair, slowly growing it out over years and emerging a glamorous pastel pearl like an elf from Lord of The Rings. That's a great idea in theory, but when you've just spent a year dressing in the same tracksuit like a sister wife from a 1980s cult, the reality of looking like Paulie Walnuts from The Sopranos until that happens feels like a cheque my confidence does not have the funds to cash. Sorry FEMINISM.

Me, seeing the price of a full colour rinse.

Hair, like so much about getting older, descends to dreary maintenance. I exercise, not in the hope of finally owning the ass of a teenage stripper but just to be able to stand up quickly without making a weird noise. It's not for adding to my life, it’s just trying to reclaim what I thought I was able to do, until I tried to do it. The odd random pain in my body are like cracks beginning to show, floor boards ominously creaking, the paint beginning to flake.

I feel myself sliding into another age category and the people who can help me are the ones I most dread asking. I do not want to start reading Women’s Way and Take A Break for tips on lower backache. Have you tried Primrose Oil or salt baths? Some E45 cream? Those weird products you found in your granny’s bathroom cabinet? The only people I want to take lifestyle tips from are millionaire teenagers on Instagram, let me keep my dignity.

I find that nothing helps you feel younger than avoiding all the milestones associated with maturity. I live in London and work in comedy so obviously I don't have children, a mortgage or a driving licence, so luckily I still have the lifestyle of a teenager - just a very old teenager. At most stand up gigs I have the pleasure of feeling like Wendy surrounded by lots and lots of Lost Boys. Though instead of being Edwardian tykes fighting pirates, they are twenty somethings trying to explain to me this comedian called Jerry Seinfeld they've just discovered, that I’ve probably never heard of.

And here I come to the most annoying sign I’m getting older, the crystal clear realisation that most young people are unbearable. Is there anything worse than being stuck making small-talk with a confident twenty year old? Young people being cool is an absolute SHAM. At school we all agreed that nobody was more annoying than the kids in the class immediately below us but as a culture we have now have decided that the youth are the tastemakers, the cool kids we should aspire to impress.

I think it’s the same instinct you have when you can't get a printer to work. Anybody new walks by, in desperation, you convince yourself they must know a trick you haven't tried, only for them to press the same button you've been jamming for the past hour. We all get to a certain age and think, surely this can't be it? So we grab the nearest eighteen year old and shout - you must know what to do?? Tell me! Centre Partings! Is that what I need to feel alive again?!

The annoying thing is, now I feel geriatric, it all feels so embarrassing to only now decide young people are boring. Oh really Maguire? Fail one Love Island audition and now you've decided that actually being old is cool? Sure Jan. I just really wish I had realised this before I had sagging skin in the game. I wish I had written evidence of a journal I wrote as a teenager saying “people only really develop anything interesting to say past 50.”

At the start of lockdown I had an idea for a sketch and I messaged a much newer act who I thought would be perfect. Hilariously, I genuinely thought I was doing her a favour. I remember thinking, how open-minded of me to ask someone with so much less experience to work with me on this? During our Zoom session I noticed something odd about her behaviour I couldn't quite place. She seemed distracted and vague. Polite, but impatient to leave. I emailed her some more about it but the idea just quietly evaporated. I know what it’s like for someone to not be interested in doing something, but there was a quality to her behaviour that was different, that I couldn't quite place. Then it hit me; she was humouring me. She thought she was doing me a favour. I was a Care in the Community project for her. Maybe she heard older people were struggling in lockdown and thought I was contacting her to ask for milk. She was probably thinking, look at me being so open-minded chatting with this warning from history.

And you know what folks? I found it hilarious, because when I was her age I was just as smug. You do you, Queen. Touché. Being young, being new, being next, is a blast, but it is not an achievement. Nor is it necessarily that interesting. “Soak it up buttercup”, I wanted to say. Check in with me in twelve years kid and see if you're still excited, still making things, still beating on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly onwards.

We are all trying to reach our potential, striving towards that shining city on a hill just out of reach. I may be grey. I may have put on so much weight in lockdown that often when I put on my bra I accidentally scoop some belly fat into my cup. TikTok makes me feel carsick. But I have a secret weapon that got me through my youth, that I’m confident will be my guide well into old age; complete and total delusion. Shellac that dye on my roots and roll me into some flattering lightning - I'm ready for my hot girl summer.

Things that have annoyed me this week: YOGA

There are two types of exercise. There are the honest ones: running for example, a Couch to 5K will take months to do comfortably, and yes you won't be able to walk tomorrow; spinning promises to be hell for 45 minutes, there’s no eye-contact and then let's never speak of this again. But other exercises are sneaky bitches. They break my heart because they promise they are different, that they'll never hurt you, that they're not even exercise! I’m talking of course about yoga.

It’s breath work, it's basically meditation, it's a massage you give your body from the inside. Well why am I crying then, yoga?

Yoga is your frenemy, the best friend who calls your new haircut “fun!”. You spend an hour with her and feel terrible for days afterwards, convinced you're the one who did something wrong.

Every time I start yoga for the first time, which is often, I think it’s changed. I convince myself that maybe I just haven't found the right class. But this teacher is so relaxed, so cool, the session begins so soothingly; rolling my arms? I can do that! Stretch my legs? Sure thing. This is easy, suspiciously easy, almost too easy, if it stays at this level, it will be fun...sorry, what’s that? Lean forward on one leg, raise my arm up and hold that position for five minutes while remembering to breathe? Shame on me yoga. SHAME. ON. ME.

“But Gráinne there is no good or bad in yoga, it’s the journey.” Oh really, can someone please remind every single yoga teacher that, so Poppy can look less surprised I can't fit my ankle around my head during my second class?

Don't think I won't forget what you put us through Poppy just because you end every class by turning the lights down and quoting Oprah Winfrey.

Let's face facts, yoga is really hard and takes years of constant practise, discipline and determination before you can even begin to mirror the tangled limbs of your instructor.

Dropping into a yoga class is like popping by for a quick warm up with the Royal Ballet Company.

So why do we see yoga classes slowly popping up in every gym, studio and community centre in the Western World over the past few decades, all promising the same lie, the same reassurance that they're here to help us, improve our lives effortlessly, painlessly?

I’m convinced this is India’s revenge on the West for the East India Trading Company, the British company that sneakily moved into their country and took over. White British people handing over their cash and walking out broken. As revenge for pillaging their country, Partition, and Apu from The Simpsons, it is fair. But I’m Irish and I want out.