Hairdressers, mend your ways!
“Have you got a boyfriend?”, she chirps. For christ’s sake, I’m forty four. I’m not going on holiday any time soon. And surely you don’t really want to know about my weekend, spent happily filthy and sweaty working in the garden.
Having a haircut is, in essence, a gorgeous and luxurious experience. But, potentially relaxing and soothing, it’s completely ruined by this inane wittering. Having given up in disgust I now go as infrequently as possible, sticking to simple bobs that don’t go askew leaving you looking slightly insane six weeks down the line.
While, as our lovely hairdresser friends tells me, trainees are trained to recognise when a customer doesn’t want to chat, most don’t! Now I find myself resorting to guerilla tactics… “Aha! I feel inspired to undertake an exchange of small talk and inanity. I’ll just pop into this hairdressers and strike while the iron’s hot”. A rare occurrence, hence the slightly unruly hair.
Hairdressers, mend your ways! The Nurse respectfully suggests that when customers make an appointment you ask, “talking or non-talking”. Just as, in the olden days, they’d ask in the cinema, ”smoking or non-smoking?”. It’s only seems fair to ask permission before condemning some hapless woman, who has only come in for a haircut, to a flow of silly, shallow twaddle that she’s too polite (and scared… you have the scissors!) to stem.
