Why is it always raining with a Force 8 wind on the way to work? Is it because we live by the coast? Is our little Dairy Lea triangle of land so exposed to the North Sea elements that the rain can only fall sideways, washing away the mascara applied only ten minutes earlier, and the wind has to whip even the most modest of pencil skirts up around my knickers before I’ve even eaten breakfast?

     I arrive at the train station looking like I’ve finished a hard day’s work, if I were employed as someone who has made reverse-crawling through hedges their profession. I then stand on a platform which has been expertly situated to make the most of the cross-winds falling down the hill where they meet the arctic northern breezes coming off the sea and cheese-slice their way through my middle and finish my hair off completely.

     When I went for my interview I arrived in no less of a parlous state. Fifteen minutes early, I went in search of a hair salon who could straighten me out. The Korean girls seemed keen to help but Mama wanted twenty quid to run the GHDs over my thatch. I declined.

          I got the job anyway and, with the bar set so low on the styling of my hair, it shouldn’t matter too much what I look like when I get there. But this is fashion, and glossy girls, with legs up to their Jasper Conran earrings and an SE1 postcode, canter through the office tossing manes of tamed tresses. I stand behind them at the printer, by the kettle, outside the lifts, admiring, envying and coveting their luscious locks. And quelling the urge to put two hands on their head and give them a good ruffle. Who knows? It could start a trend.