I wanted to be Judith Durham. I loved her donkey fringe and try as I might, I could never get anywhere near her hair style.
Before the Seekers arrived and in the days of Gene Pitney, Lonnie Donegan, Patsy Cline and more besides, my older sis and her friends used to get ready together in our big front bedroom every Friday night. It was youth club night and I was too young to go but I`d watch sis with her mates Rita and Maureen get ready.
Spikey hair curlers everywhere, the air thick with the smell of Bel Air hairspray on back combed hair, Max Factor powder and lipstick and mascara you spat in. Big dresses with big net underskirts, stilettos which punched holes in the lino which never failed to set Mum on the war path and she`d complain that lino didn`t grow on trees and to open the ****** bedroom window before we all choked on the hairspray fumes.
The one thing I remember more than anything was the smell of burning hair. My sis and her friend Maureen had short back combed hair but Rita had long hair and insisted she had it ironed as straight as a poker every Friday night. Sis would set up the ironing board and Rita would lay her head sideways on the board and one of the other girls would lay newspaper over Rita`s hair and iron it. Heaven knows how she never ended up bald and then the three 15 year olds would head off to the local Methodist Church hall and dance , eye up other girls frocks, play shy with the local lads, drink fizzy pop from glass bottles with a straw and be home and in bed by 10pm under the rules of Dad !
(PS the rules of Dad were still in place when I was finally old enough to go to the youth club but by then music had moved on, sis and her mates had moved on to leaving school, working, steady boyfriends and so on)