Dad's it's OK to be Rubbish at... Ponytails

I'm bald, I have been for several years now.

My knowledge of what to do with hair starts and stops at throwing a bit of molding mud in it and rubbing it in to look messy, and the period where i used hair straighteners as part of some clever comb over weave thing i nearly managed to pull off in my early 30's

It's fair to say that aside from the those stray long hairs I've started finding in my eye brows and growing out of my back as i've got older hair is an old, distant, barely remembered friend.  So when 'Number 1' asks for her hair in a ponytail for school we have two options

• a) I try and sell her the benefits of an Alice band  
• b) i try a ponytail.  

Plan a) never ever works, even when you pitch it to her that Alice Bands are cool, as seen on Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella (Pro Tip - never ever mention footballers at this point) you are only met with a withering stare that only a 4 year old with attitude can deliver. You know the one that questions the very fabric of your existence on this planet as an adult let alone a parent. I've learnt this look also signify s the beginning of the count down to an apocalyptic tantrum.

Plan b is where the nightmare begins, i only have two hands, but i'm supposed to brush the hair?  hold it together? and then hold a hairband in to hold it in place? You have got to be kidding me.

I try and make my daughter happy by having a stab at it. But because i don't have three hands ends in me packing her off to school with a tail so off centre, so wonky, that any pony whose tail it resembled would have been shot and packed off to the glue factory before it even got to run in the paddock.

I'm yet to try bastard pig tails.