Dreadtastic

The recent launch of Rastamouse (@Rastamouse_irie) jolted long forgotten memories of my life as a loctician.

Back around 2005-ish, my friend wanted dreadlocks. We looked into getting them done professionally and it would have cost something like £300-£400. So we searched online and found a home DIY kit for a fraction of the price.

Up for a challenge, I told him to order it and I'd have a go.

Possibly one of the most serendipitous moments of my life when it finally arrived and I noticed that the return address was two doors up from my mum's house in a tiny little village in the middle of nowhere.

Turned out my mum's partner taught the guy to drive. He set up the UK's biggest supply chain of dreadlock paraphernalia. Sadly it's since closed down. Shame, as I discovering that I had a natural aptitude for dreadlocking hair - I did it prolifically whilst studying for my MA.

Here's some of my favourite moments:

The very first attempt - brave man.

It's traditional to name your first dread.

Back comb, back comb - lock peppa, back comb...

About eight hours later...

Dreads are taking over the world! Mwahahaha....

12 hours of X-files in....

Et voila!

Those self same dreads six years later in 2012!

It's amazing to think that six years ago, I created a work of art that's still walking around today.

The experiment that launched a thousand dreads :)

My first professional gig - meet Jack Sparrow!

Also my longest - thirteen hours!

I eventually met my nemesis. Not someone who wanted dreads, but someone with nine year old natural ones, who needed them separating!

Natural dreads mean that they were created by just leaving your hair alone, rather than by 'dreading-up', which is what I'm doing in the pictures above. It's very hard to achieve natural dreads with caucasian hair, but he'd managed it and they were all the way down his back. The problem was that they had 'congoed' together (loctician speak for 'they'd grown into one another'). This was the first time I'd ever properly separated dreads and I was terrified I'd cut one off!

The problem.



The length of the problem.



Success story.

Possibly my finest hour :)

I managed to pull five dreads out of that congo.

Here's a couple of other memorable clients:

The lady above had naturally red hair which she had dyed darker at the bottom. It created quite a funky effect from above.

This lady worked in a crystal shop in town. One day she got bored and decided to dreadlock her own hair using the splitting method. This is where you take a length of your hair and pull it apart. You just keep repeating that until, eventually, you have a dreadlock. It's incredibly hard to do, not to mention time consuming. It took her (if I recall correctly) about nine days. But the result was stunning. The softest dreadlocks I'd ever worked with - and I love what she did with the coloured wool.

Above is my friend Lies, who I'm off to see in a couple of weeks. We met in Rwanda through another friend. The moment I mentioned I tidied up dreadlocks, I regularly found myself in her house being plied with chocolate and tea. A good loctician is worth looking after ;)

This is her after one of those tidy-up sessions. I even tidied them for her wedding.

So, as a side-line, it did me well. Helped me meet new friends, stopped me starving as a student and definitely gave me something to talk about at parties.

Quite a laborious way to earn a living, though. Lots of sitting around watching DVDs, and sore thumbs from combing.

But an unusual talent I'm proud to say I possess.