Just cut it out

I’ve just had my hair cut and it was a tortuous experience.

The woman to whom I normally entrust my greying locks was shut “due to illness and holidays” the notice said, though of course that should be “owing to” not “due to”.

I resisted the urge to take a permanent marker to the window and change the wording, but it already had me on edge as I found another hair stylist.

Once the operation actually started I was reminded why I normally patronised the other stylist despite her grammatical shortcomings. I’m not good at small talk. Despite not knowing that due is an adjective and therefore must modify a noun, Tracey is very adept at cutting hair and doesn’t engage me in small talk.

I have no issues with the way this second female chopped and shaped my follicles, but I struggled to avoid tedious conversation.

She managed to establish that I WAS on my lunch hour; I DID work locally; and that I did not watch much TV because my wife enjoys X Factor and soap operas. Apparently all “us girls like watching stuff like Peter and Katie”. I resisted the urge to tell her that even my wife draws the line at such tripe.

I also struggled to resist the temptation to join in the conversations her contemporaries were having with their clients, in much the same way she joined in.

In just a 15-minute session I learned:

• The credit crunch is all the fault of the immigrants

• Swine flu is on its way back and its worse than ever

• ‘They’ don’t test vaccines properly

• The first swine flu inoculations affected people’s brains so badly that they’re now in wheelchairs

• And that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from the moon

I was pretty sure most of them were incorrect and knew damned well the first and last were. But I resisted.

After my hairdresser had ascertained that business was picking up at our firm she actually made me feel personally responsible for the laying-off of two of my colleagues earlier in the year. She was only just able to prevent herself from accusing me of bringing down Lehman Brothers. Or so it seemed to me.

At that point I decided I would say nothing further despite the ridiculous assertions which had been winging their way around the salon and stated as 'fact'.

My last words were “please can you trim my eyebrows?” and “thank-you”.

I have decided that in the event of Tracey being in ill in future, I will simply let my hair grow to avoid having to endure the sort of banal chit-chat that almost compelled me to throw myself on to a pair of long-handled hair scissors.