Oh the ignominy, O the shame, O the disgrace!
Today I was thrown out of the hairdressers! I mean as a sentence it doesn’t even make sense does it. I wasn’t drunk or tripping out of my head. I wasn’t naked or making lewd remarks to the usually delightful haircutting maidens. I’d had a shower just this morning so my body odour was under control. I hadn’t been struck down suddenly by Torrette’s syndrome and was swearing uncontrollably, I wasn’t walking around ringing a bell shouting unclean unclean while rashers of my body fell off in a medieval fashion. I…well you get the picture.
No it’s just that this lunch time I popped into the hairdressers, the one I usually go to, as I needed a haircut. For some undisclosed reason (at the moment - answers on a postcard) I needed to get my luscious locks trimmed to something resembling a proper haircut. So I wandered in asked if they could accommodate my head this lunch time and they answered in the affirmative. So I sat until a young chavette (bling in the teeth – a dead give a way) came up and tousled my hair asking me what I wanted, big boy!. (I added the last bit for comedic effect as if you didn’t know!)
Now normally for a middle aged guy like me this doesn’t happen so often so I told her what I wanted. I explained in real English, not some made up language like American (Hi Glenn and family!) what I wanted her to do with my hair. I told her why I need it short (need to know basis at the moment) she looked at me blankly. I demonstrated by lifting my hair and pulling it back into a representation of what it should look like.
Clearly her hairdressing manual (Haircutting for Dummies) had not prepared her for the task I set before her i.e. take my unruly, long, flowing, curly, dark, romantic renaissance type hair and turn it into something short, smart and manageable but without making me look like an SAS reject or a gormless plonker!(difficult I know)
She gazed into the mirror the ‘diamond’ in her tooth glinting, this seemed to be the only spark of life she had in her head. She wandered off and another long willowy girl came to wash my hair. ‘No’ I said ‘I don’t want conditioner because it will all be off in a minute’. But I guess it would have looked nice and shiney as it floated to the floor. Anyway after a quick towelling, I sat and waited for about 5 minutes while the Vicky Pollard clone yakked into her mobile in the staff room.
She came back and once again I tried to tell this hairdresser, if I can call her that as I have no evidence, she could have been the owners long lost daughter for all I knew, what I wanted done. Now that my hair was wet, it sort of approximated the style I wanted – the dashing, modern and trendy middle aged man. I tired again by pointing at my head and the mirror image of me in the mirror that this is sort of what it should look like. She still looked at me gormlessly. 'You mean you want it long and brushed back, not short like you said before?' she said.
Today I was thrown out of the hairdressers! I mean as a sentence it doesn’t even make sense does it. I wasn’t drunk or tripping out of my head. I wasn’t naked or making lewd remarks to the usually delightful haircutting maidens. I’d had a shower just this morning so my body odour was under control. I hadn’t been struck down suddenly by Torrette’s syndrome and was swearing uncontrollably, I wasn’t walking around ringing a bell shouting unclean unclean while rashers of my body fell off in a medieval fashion. I…well you get the picture.
No it’s just that this lunch time I popped into the hairdressers, the one I usually go to, as I needed a haircut. For some undisclosed reason (at the moment - answers on a postcard) I needed to get my luscious locks trimmed to something resembling a proper haircut. So I wandered in asked if they could accommodate my head this lunch time and they answered in the affirmative. So I sat until a young chavette (bling in the teeth – a dead give a way) came up and tousled my hair asking me what I wanted, big boy!. (I added the last bit for comedic effect as if you didn’t know!)
Now normally for a middle aged guy like me this doesn’t happen so often so I told her what I wanted. I explained in real English, not some made up language like American (Hi Glenn and family!) what I wanted her to do with my hair. I told her why I need it short (need to know basis at the moment) she looked at me blankly. I demonstrated by lifting my hair and pulling it back into a representation of what it should look like.
Clearly her hairdressing manual (Haircutting for Dummies) had not prepared her for the task I set before her i.e. take my unruly, long, flowing, curly, dark, romantic renaissance type hair and turn it into something short, smart and manageable but without making me look like an SAS reject or a gormless plonker!(difficult I know)
She gazed into the mirror the ‘diamond’ in her tooth glinting, this seemed to be the only spark of life she had in her head. She wandered off and another long willowy girl came to wash my hair. ‘No’ I said ‘I don’t want conditioner because it will all be off in a minute’. But I guess it would have looked nice and shiney as it floated to the floor. Anyway after a quick towelling, I sat and waited for about 5 minutes while the Vicky Pollard clone yakked into her mobile in the staff room.
She came back and once again I tried to tell this hairdresser, if I can call her that as I have no evidence, she could have been the owners long lost daughter for all I knew, what I wanted done. Now that my hair was wet, it sort of approximated the style I wanted – the dashing, modern and trendy middle aged man. I tired again by pointing at my head and the mirror image of me in the mirror that this is sort of what it should look like. She still looked at me gormlessly. 'You mean you want it long and brushed back, not short like you said before?' she said.
I looked at myself in the mirror, a worried man was looking back at me, he shook his head, I knew what he wanted me to do. I had to leave NOW before the damage was done.
The confidence had drained out of me, I knew if I stayed in the chair I would walk out looking like I’d just spent 6 years before the mast in a raging force 10 gale, on the Dead Sea (the saltiest sea image what it does to your hair) with no shampoo, no conditioner and a walrus tusk to use as a comb. So I told her that I wasn’t confident that she knew what she was doing and I wasn’t going to let her cut my hair. I though I was being terribly brave as well, I mean she was a woman and she had scissors in her hand – visions of John Wayne Bobbett appeared before me.
But no sooner had I stood up than the owner himself appeared and ordered me off his premises saying I should have given her a chance. So I have a sneaking suspicion that young Vicky was his daughter trying her hand or either a trainee or a new employee straight from college, perhaps she’s done a distance learning course that hadn’t involved talking customers requirements over with them first to make sure both parties knew what they were getting. Perhaps she'd practised on one of those dolls heads, the ones that look like Toyah Wilcox on speed.
I left with my head held high and my uncut locks damply streaming behind me. I soon found a more obliging hairdressers, who for half the price of the first have done a really good job and the young woman who cut my hair had no problems understanding what I wanted even though she had her belly hanging out, well not hanging but nicely on show, which was a relief as I though that somehow I had got up stupid this morning (a thesis somewhat supported by the fact that at 9a.m. this morning my computer pinged and told me that I had to be in a School which was 20 miles away in 15 minutes, suffice it to say I had to ring them and claim that my leg had fallen off overnight and I was just waiting for the glue to set and that was why I couldn’t be there in the next 10 minutes – I think they believed me).
But hey how many people do you know that can claim that they too have been thrown out of the hairdressers?
The confidence had drained out of me, I knew if I stayed in the chair I would walk out looking like I’d just spent 6 years before the mast in a raging force 10 gale, on the Dead Sea (the saltiest sea image what it does to your hair) with no shampoo, no conditioner and a walrus tusk to use as a comb. So I told her that I wasn’t confident that she knew what she was doing and I wasn’t going to let her cut my hair. I though I was being terribly brave as well, I mean she was a woman and she had scissors in her hand – visions of John Wayne Bobbett appeared before me.
But no sooner had I stood up than the owner himself appeared and ordered me off his premises saying I should have given her a chance. So I have a sneaking suspicion that young Vicky was his daughter trying her hand or either a trainee or a new employee straight from college, perhaps she’s done a distance learning course that hadn’t involved talking customers requirements over with them first to make sure both parties knew what they were getting. Perhaps she'd practised on one of those dolls heads, the ones that look like Toyah Wilcox on speed.
I left with my head held high and my uncut locks damply streaming behind me. I soon found a more obliging hairdressers, who for half the price of the first have done a really good job and the young woman who cut my hair had no problems understanding what I wanted even though she had her belly hanging out, well not hanging but nicely on show, which was a relief as I though that somehow I had got up stupid this morning (a thesis somewhat supported by the fact that at 9a.m. this morning my computer pinged and told me that I had to be in a School which was 20 miles away in 15 minutes, suffice it to say I had to ring them and claim that my leg had fallen off overnight and I was just waiting for the glue to set and that was why I couldn’t be there in the next 10 minutes – I think they believed me).
But hey how many people do you know that can claim that they too have been thrown out of the hairdressers?
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