Time waits for no man.

Least of all when the early morning alarm goes off.

As it did, this morning, at an unearthly hour. It was pitch black outside, and we all had things to do, people to see.

As we bimbled around, preparing for the day, I became aware of stormy weather in one corner of my bedroom. Maddie was positioned in front of the mirror, emitting theatrical gusty sighs of dissatisfaction. She can communicate irritation like no other. It usually rubs me instantly up the wrong way and I too become inexplicably exasperated.

It seemed that her hair was wrong.

We have been following a hair pantomime over the last few days. At the weekend a new hairdresser cut it, and it made her look fabulous. She knew this. Out of the hairdressers she flounced delightedly, not walking but sashaying.

Of course, everyone who saw her loved it, and everyone who saw her said so.

Once I tried to explain that you didn’t have to be a blond bombshell with long tresses to be beautiful. I told her about Amelie, that wonderful heroine of French cinema, who sported a diminutive French bob.

“Mummy”, she told me on Saturday,”I feel like Amelie.”

We left the hair washing as long as we could, but eventually it could be avoided no longer.

Reader, I did it wrong.

It wouldn’t dry right, and I didn’t know why, because I am a hair simpleton. My sister is the hair genius.

So, as I dropped a small 10-year-old cumulonimbus off with said sister, Libs, before school, I pleaded that she might work a little magic on Maddie’s hair.

She performed her enchantments, Mad was happy, and the day proceeded with a great deal more order. Libs gave me a lesson on how to dry it. I listened and took notes.

Yesterday was hair washing day once more. We braced ourselves, and I dried it according to Libs instructions. I knew which hair to dry in which direction at which stage. How could I fail?

Let me tell you how. I used the wrong brush.

And now Maddie stood this morning, harrumphing and emitting sonar batsqueaks of pique which were, frankly, putting me on edge.

I decided to ignore it, equip everyone with uniforms and go and wash my own hair.

Once this was accomplished, I flew back down from the top floor and approached the decrepit hairdryer (we’re at the stage where we switch it on from the socket). I glanced at the time.

Erk.

I had just five minutes before my nieces the Princesses arrived, with their immaculately groomed locks.

There was no brush in the room. Better half-dry and messy than soaking wet, I reasoned, putting my head upside down and drying like there was no tomorrow.

I was half way through when the knock came at the door. I abandoned hairification and we all thundered downstairs to meet the Princesses at the door.

Time flies during the hour before school. Children play, scheme, draw, argue and plot. They are a joy and a trial. All human life is there, haring up and down three floors and utilising every barbie and power ranger available, with or without a full compliment of limbs.

Two packed lunches later, I collided with one of my little princesses in the hall.

“Hello Sweetie!” I said. “How are you doing?”

“Fine, Auntie Kate”, the sweetie grinned.

There was a short pause while I recalibrated. “Excellent”, I said. “Now: what am I doing?”

“Perhaps”, the perfect little girl standing below me suggested helpfully, “you were going to do your hair.”

Oh, yes, perhaps I was.

It must look infinitely worse than I thought.

One look in the mirror and a wild woman stared back. I fought away references to Bertha Rochester, the mad wife in Mr Rochester’s attic, from Jane Eyre, and that inevitable Medusa myth, about a wild snake-haired creature.

I went to find a brush and tame this mane, ready for a trip to the School Gate.

Rapunzel wouldn’t have fallen into that trap. Now there’s a lady who valued, not just the beauty, but the strength of her hair.

She had had a tough start. I can never get over the fact that she was exchanged, in effect, for some rather good lettuces.

But maybe I’ve been reading an alternative version to my son all these years. My version starts with an ailing wife and a loving husband, who have a good view over the wall into the garden belonging to their neighbour, the witch.

All the wife can think of, all day, every day, is the succulent green leaves which grow from the witch’s fertile brown earth.

Of course, when she is close to death, she dispatches her husband to steal some, and naturally he is of little brain, and gets caught. He pleads for mercy and lettuces, and the witch says, Fine, but give me your first born in return.

I shall not pass comment on such strange and Grimmsian parenting, but this foolish man agrees, and when Rapunzel is born she passes straight to the witch as per their strange little agreement.

Being a rather ugly witch with an innate fear of rejection, she imprisons Rapunzel in a high tower, with only a window to watch the world go by.

The solution is so simple:  just take 18 years, a besotted Prince, and a long and glorious head of hair, and everyone lives happily every after, except possibly that insecure old witch.

The other day Maddie asked me a question which had me googling the answer. She asked me, “Mummy, why do we have hair on our head?”

The main body of thought was clear. Hair keeps those huge, well developed brains of ours warm as they develop.

But bad hair days, however, indicate that hair does so much more for us. Good hair makes us sashay. It can make us feel like a sophisticated French film star. It is part of our non verbal language.

And it can apparently get you rescued from very high towers.