Barbarous

The experience of going to a hairdressers is normally an uncomfortable one, the event is so unbearably intimate that you feel you almost have to speak to them, much like, say, visiting a cancer patient, or a prostitute perhaps.

Eventually though, when I grow sick enough of people offering me spare change and church goers trying to take me in, I will relent and prepare to visit one of the ghastly places of inane, pointless chat about holidays and weekends. Such, unfortunately, was the case today.

Taking a seat in one of those surprisingly comfortable swivel chairs, I made a note of a) the possibility of trying to drag it out of the door unnoticed and b) the throngs of stunningly attractive hairdressers that filled the place. Things were looking up. Luckily I had the protective cover sheet hanging down to my knees already.

So, waiting with the giddy anticipation of a man in need of a transplant witnessing a multiple pile-up, my heart plummeted to my shoes to see a thunderous land-beast chaffing her rolling thighs in a wheezing effort to reach me. Like the scene from Jurassic Park, the bottles of mousse and hair gel rippled in uneasy anticipation of her arrival. Looking back, the safest thing to do would have been to run screaming immediately, but it was too late as she hacked up a phlegmy cough into her arm and rasped, “what’ll it be then love”, in a voice deeper than Brian Blessed could ever hope for.

Smile frozen to my face with a fear tinged with traces of morbid fascination, I gently thrusted a twenty pound note at her and whispered, “err, one haircut please..……love”.

I could see I’d cocked up the etiquette of proceedings immediately from the look on face, which gave the very distinct impression that I’d just asked if I could mutilate her first born for some sort of corporate event.

“How Do You Want Your Hair Cut?” was the reply, said in the manner one might speak to a particularly despised and disabled step child. And it was at this moment I realised, ‘Shit! I’m back in the UK!’. Where service providers have to pretend to take your view into account. If I tried to direct a Swiss hairdresser in how my hair should look once they’d finished, they would have no hesitation in disemboweling me with the scissors and dragging me to the gutter by my entrails.

I had no idea what to say. Eventually I stammered out, “well, err, mostly I guess, like, shorter?”.

At least this meant the rest of the experience took place in stony, beautiful silence. Next time, I’ll simply walk in wearing Batman pyjamas.