Never a Blonde

I now realise where and when I went wrong in life and I’m putting it down to one defining moment when I was fourteen years old. I’ve gone down lots of wrong paths before and since, but this one now feels like the make or break. Her name was Sarah Taylor* and she was the most beautiful girl in school. Skin like milk and hair blonde, shiny and straight. She was perfect, yet somehow fragile. Her voice was but a whisper, and when she asked me out on a date one lunchtime in the corridor, I said no, because I thought she was boring. When we left school at sixteen, Sarah gave me two addresses. One was in Essex and one was in Sweden. I never got in contact with her and I vaguely regret it up to this day.

Forever onwards, I would little contact with blonde women (except one who told me she was going to ruin my life). Blondes may as well be from Mars; so remote and alien they seemed. Sure they have more fun, but they never invited me along. Never a blonde. I always thought I was missing out on something.

(A friend of a friend is a blonde. Her blonde hair was her life. It was long and straight and beautiful. One year she was in India, on an overnight train. During the night someone chopped off her hair and stole it. When she woke she was devastated.)

* Not her real name at all actually.

The BFI’s Blonde Crazy season has just started, showing such personal favourites as Bunuel’s Belle de Jour with the delectable Catherine Deneuve, Cassavette’s Gloria with the riveting Gena Rowlands, Hitchcock’s Marnie with icy Tippi Hedren and Godard’s Le Mépris with bountiful Brigitte Bardot.