Haircuts

This has been a topic of at least one of my blogs in the past. I hate going to the hairdresser. There is the well-meaning but lame attempt to get one talking:

'Are you going anywhere nice tonight?'
 'What else have you got planned for the rest of the day?'
'Have you decided where you are going for your holiday yet?'

Much they care. They are no doubt taught to be chatty as some folk like a chance to have a blether. I wish they were also schooled in recognising the curmudgeonly elderly person who doesn't want to talk.

Then there is the apparently endless snipping.  Hanks have to be divided, the ends cut off and then sort of pinked (technical term for something my mother did to hems and so forth with a pair of special jagged edged scissors. I have no idea why.) The pinking goes on and on whilst they dream of what they are going to have for supper or the latest boyfriend. All of a sudden they come to and hack off the end in one blunt movement again. Why? I have yet to fathom that.

Then there is the ignoring of the client's neurosis about the length of her fringe. If mine doesn't come down past my eyebrows it's the paper bag over the head for me for a couple of weeks. Or utter misery as I feel, to quote the cat (or was it the donkey?) in Shrek, 'all exposed and nasty.'

Then follows the endless drying. What takes me ten minutes at home, even when my hair is longish, takes them twenty, thirty… it feels like a week. Separating, curling, pinning, laying flat, doing the next bit. On and on. I don't have thick hair either. However long it takes I am usually sent forth into the world with a damp head and get a cold because damp hair on a December day in Scotland is not good.

Of course I enthuse when shown the result in the mirror.The back looks very good - it doesn't have my face in it. A face that needs a certain length of frame. I am a wimp. I don't complain.

About two, or even three years ago, I decided this wasn't worth the increasingly large lump of cash I was obliged to hand over gracefully at the end of the ordeal. Plus a tip of course. (If I wanted to go back I had to give them a reason not to scalp me.) I made the decision to cut my own. And though I always imagine the neatly coiffed  NDFAS ladies who sit behind me at lectures thinking 'Must ask her which hairdresser she uses so I can avoid them' at least I don't have to suffer the irritation, boredom and ultimate despair at the result.

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