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NOW you see it, now you don't. First step in the final preparations for her world-wide walkabout was to ditch her hair so she can travel light. VICTORIA HAWKINS was in on the chop.
THE last thing Emma Morton wanted to take on her two-year trip back-packing round the world was her crowning glory. So the hair had to go. She said a hairdryer and mousse are the last things you need taking up room in your rucksack when you're trekking across Kenya, India, Nepal and Thailand. What you really want to take with you is clothes and medical supplies like bandages, pills and potions.
"We're going to have to rough it. Apart from that we'll be travelling during the monsoon season and we'll only have scissors on a Swiss Army knife to cut it with. Anyway I might catch lice," she said shaking back her 20" spirals of hair before her big chop.
Long-haired for as long as she can remember, 19-year-old Emma, from the Rivers Estate in Ipswich, said she'd never had the nerve to have a proper crop before. She's travelling with her boyfriend, Ian Lowe, who set out on the trip ahead of her last November, and his friend Martin Mann. Ian always wore his hair very long, usually in a ponytail and he'd had all his cut off on the way to the airport (not that she's seen the result yet) so she thought she'd follow suit.Emma's naturally curly locks presented no problem at all to Carol Judd at Nutters Haircutters in St Nicholas Street, Ipswich. She first gave Emma's hairline, her ears and the lie of her locks a quick-once over and discovered her natural cow's lick at the front – all things to be taken into consideration when you have your hair cut short. With that, Carol's scissors started flashing. Within minutes the first 12" of hair was lying on the floor. "That gets rid of the bulk," she said, "now we can see how it falls." Emma was still smiling.
The next stage is slower and involves gradually taking the haircut down to it's final shape. Then she thinned the hair with special scissors, dried it and stood back to see the final reaction. She said that if really Emma hated it, we could always make her a paper hat out of the Evening Star to cover it up. "Oh, no. It's excellent," said Emma, "I love it. That's just what I wanted." Apart from feeling a bit lighter and not being able to feel hair round her neck any more she said it was perfect.
No doubt when she, Ian and Martin meet up in Capetown next week for the first stint of their Intrepid Three Go To Africa Trip, comparing their new hairstyles will be one of the first things they do. "I'm more likely to be more upset at his short hair than mine," she said.
THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT
BOB Southgate, owner of Nutters said: "If you want to have long hair cut short, any good hairdresser in town will give you a free consultation before you finally decide. We talk them through it, ask them are they sure they want to do it and give them the confidence to go through with it. We want to make sure it's not done on a whim after an argument with their boyfriend or anything."
Her haircut cost £18 and the make-up for our finished picture was done by Jennifer Whiting from Bodylines in Tacket Street and cost £12.50.
WORLD TRIP
Emma has been working as a tele-sales girl at the Star during the day and at McGinty's in the evening to save the £3,000 to finance her trip. Travelling up through Africa and then across the Indian sub-continent to Nepal and onto Thailand, the three hope to get to Australia in August where they have obtained work permits.
For her trip she has had shots for rabies, Japanese encephalitis, meningitis, hepatitis A and diphtheria and is already inoculated against tetanus and polio!
She doesn't intend coming home for two years.
Reproduced by kind permission of the The Evening Star, Ipswich. [MAIL]
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