Despite not being a natural blonde, it is so much a part of my identity that if you cut me, I would most likely bleed peroxide.  At 8, sick of people describing my hair as ‘mousey’ (that’s the generic mouse you find hanging out of a cat’s mouth, A.K.A. your hair looks like vermin), I longed to be blonde like Goldie Hawn in Protocol. I bought a misshapen Marilyn Monroe wig in Woolworths that I hid in my desk at school and wore at break-time like a hat. When I was 14 I threatened to use Sun-In and my mum finally conceded to highlights. The dye was cast.

I got progressively blonder (with a few orange and yellow moments en route) and by my 21st birthday I had long, white-blonde hair modelled on Daryl Hannah in Splash. Its seriously high maintenance, requiring at least 6-weekly appointments, which I’ve just worked out has cost me around £14,000 in hairdressing appointments to date. For that I could have been a mouse in a Toyota Auris according to my husband, who incidentally calls his own distinctly mousey hair ‘dark blonde’.

As a new girl at University it became my defining feature - as one of two Graces in my halls of residence I became known as ‘Blonde Grace’. Interestingly the other was known as ‘Tits Grace’, presumably because she whipped them about with the same pride as I did my brassy ponytail, though not as many people wanted to motorboat my hair.

Over a decade later, it’s still entrenched in my sense of identity, something I was totally unaware of until I made a change. Like nearly every blonde who’d spent years hiding roots, I tried out the Ombre look in 2011, letting my crown grow dark and making the ends even blonder. After one-too-many “Oh is it supposed to look like that?” reactions, I decided I might as well try life as a brunette. I was approaching 30 and wanted to be chic, sophisticated and serious, all the things I’d been assured were out of reach of blondes.

Looking in the salon mirror, I was thrilled. It was like chocolate – Green and Black’s 70% Cocoa Solid was how I briefed my hairdresser - with a gloss I couldn’t have dreamt of when fair. But by the next day, I was already over it. Everything was a bit stark and pale in comparison, my forehead an enormous expanse of putty. Without the almost-brittle quality of bleached roots, it seemed permanently lank. People who knew me Before Brunette kept asking if I was pregnant and therefore couldn’t bleach anymore – it was as if there had to be a reason why I’d make such a drastic change.

I felt shy around new people, backing into walls and leaving parties early. I had to supress the urge to preface every sentence with, “By the way, I used to be blonde.” It was a real Samson-and-Delilah complex, if instead of scissors Delilah had gone ballistic with a box of Nice’n’Easy. My sense of self, while not lost altogether had definitely been obscured. And most shocking of all, I looked nothing like Leigh Lezark.

See, you know where you are with women like Jennifer Aniston and Kate Middleton. Their sensible, unthreatening hair colour rarely changes. Dependable and predictable, it’s as much a part of their public persona as their nude patent pumps and unchallenging capsule wardrobes. But Katy Perry, Rihanna and Lady Gaga run the gamut of colours - blue, pink, white, black, red, green… There’s no knowing WHAT those crazy kids will do next, and to a steadfast blonde like me, it’s like a personality disorder playing out on their heads.

So why can’t I do a Rihanna and wear rainbow hair with pride? Why must I be so loyal to one colour? It’s not a ‘gentlemen prefer blondes’ thing. They generally preferred Tits Grace as it turned out, and now my husband says of my brunette phase, “It’s like choosing between cream and custard – you still get crumble regardless.” I still don’t really know if that’s a compliment or not.

Being blonde isn’t a part of my personality, either. I don’t conform to the bubbly, dumb or cold, Nordic ice-queen blonde stereotype, nor am I a bombshell or a bimbo. Maybe it’s because the height of my blondeness coincided with the start of adulthood and the party years; being young and single; living with my mates; having no responsibilities beyond one lecture a week and getting fake tan stains out of my clothes. My skin’s changed since then (less fake tan, more lines) and my shape is a little less bouncy, less taut. Even my hair sometimes changes – short, long, thin, thick, with a fringe, without one - but the colour is a constant. To begin with it was about emulating other people – Goldie, Daryl, my best friend Hattie – but now it’s synonymous with being young and excited, and that’s no bad thing.