So I dyed my hair.

This may not be an extravagant gesture for most people, but it was decidedly out of character for someone who last gave a damn about how they looked over 25 years ago. I can actually pinpoint the moment at which I decided not to care about my appearance - it was July 1982, when I wore a pair of leather trousers to a Police concert in Aylesbury and was openly mocked for it. If the people of that grim little market town are deriding you, it's time to give it up. So after that I went through an extended phase of anti-fashion Hawaiian shirt wearing and then, when they all went in a car that got stolen, just gave up altogether. I can't be bothered to tie up my shoelaces. I wear slippers in the office. I don't own a suit. You get the general idea.

This apathy extends beyond clothing to personal grooming. I haven't combed or brushed my hair since I was a teenager. I shave a couple of times a week tops. I'm not a handsome man, and I see little point in wasting time and effort trying to make the best of a bad job.

But a couple of months back, I decided to dye my hair. I don't know why. It was easy to attribute it (and many people did) to the cliched midlife crisis, but it didn't feel like that. I've had periods in the last decade when I've felt like time is racing away from me, but this summer hasn't been one of them. I have no great desire to remain youthful. I wasn't especially happy when I was young, so there really isn't much to recapture. My only real achievement of any merit is fathering some children, and that's an ongoing task. So it was difficult to pin down exactly what the rationale behind the decision was. In the end, I put it down mostly to boredom. Every day the same chores, the same job, the same place, the same routine, and no realistic way to change any of it. So if I couldn't alter any of that, I could alter myself.

Here's where it got weird though. For something I did just for the hell of it, just for something to do, it made me feel good. I don't imagine I look any better, but I look different, and that's been oddly positive. There was a fair bit of mockery, which was to be anticipated, but some highly unexpected positive feedback as well. Amongst other comments, a woman at work told me it was sexy (she's heavily pregnant, it wasn't a come on, calm down). Sexy is not an adjective that has ever been used of me before, certainly not by anybody to whom I'm not married. In fact sexy is not a word anybody in full possession of their faculties would ever remotely consider using of me. But someone did. After nearly 30 years of consciously avoiding mirrors, I suddenly find myself not minding if I chance to see myself in one. I feel OK about how I look. This is a sentiment to which I can not accustom myself.

All of which made me remember that, however much we kid ourselves we're the finished article, we never are. As we stagger and stumble through life, each backward glance makes us smirk at the fool we've left behind and smile smugly at the self-knowledge that we now know ourselves and are fully grown. And it's nonsense. We're never done, we're a permanent work in progress.