I have this picture in my head: a cute bob with the edge a little higher at the back and a little longer at the front and lots and lots of layers at the back. I have been to the hair dresser three times in the past year, pointed to the picture of this in his book and each time come out with something different. The first time it was just rescued from being a mullet. Absolutely not what I’ve been dreaming of.
A friend of mine has short hair and it always looks nice. “Aha!” I cunningly thought after I saw her last sporting yet another fab do, “I’ll go to her hairdresser.”
I turned up armed and ready: print outs of exactly what I wanted from the front, side and back. No room for confusion this time. No siree!
Chop, chop, brush, brush, snip, snip. It was going swimmingly. Best still, after asking where I was from and my name, he didn’t try to talk too much to me.
Sitting next to me was a platinum blonde getting something done with her colour. About two thirds of the way through my cut, she started getting antsy: she wasn’t happy.
The simmering turned into a boiling, “My husband only has one day off a week..”
“Oh bloody hell,” I realised, “She’s British.”
“..and I’m wasting it in here!”
Heads remained still, eyes around the room picked out other eyes.
“I wanted a rinse! I’ve been here three hours and you’ve done nothing!”
“Yes, madam,” my hairdresser said, “we gave you a rinsage.”
My hairdresser, Sam, was Lebanese. Lebanese generally speak Arabic first, French second and English third. His English wasn’t fluent, but was comprehensible (and come on, his third language!).
“But I wanted a rinse!” At this point we are now rising up the decibel scale.
“But madam, yes, we gave you a rinsage!”
The other client and I had stopped breathing.
“I just want someone who speaks ENGLISH!” Now topping the decibel range.
Other client and I shifted uncomfortably.
“Nobody’s fucking listening to what I’m saying!” she said under her breath, but loud enough for everyone to hear.
“I JUST WANT SOMEONE WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH!”
Absolutely dumbfounded, probably with my mouth gaping, eyes certainly popping out of my head, I thought about saying something in her beloved English along the lines of, “We’re in Egypt, nobody has to speak English!” but was in too much shock to say anything.
The Egyptian lady on the other side of her volunteered to translate in a tone, lost on the British woman, that saw stern and utterly disapprovingly.
In the end, Blondie flounced out of the salon without paying.
My hairdresser was by now just as furious as Blondie had been, but he couldn’t flounce out. I, still mortified, sat stock still and didn’t say a word.
This was rather unfortunate.
Hairdresser Sam was taking his pent up frustration out on my hair.
I breathed deeply decided that I would sit back and think of the UK. Not wanting to give everyone in the salon, who was now watching Sam, further reason to think that British women are cows I resolved to keep my mouth firmly shut.
Perhaps too firmly. When the receptionist looked at me, then up at my hair and asked perplexedly if I liked the cut, I should have broken down and started wailing there and then. With valiant stiff upper lip, I smiled politely instead and said, “Yes. Thank you.”
So, great my country men, in the name of your honour and all that is good about our great nation, I now sport a haircut that looks like a short, curly Worzel Gummidge with an uneven pudding bowl.
And to my one particular fellow country woman: if you wake up and find your hair dyed green, or wake up to find it has all been shaved off, you’ll know I’ve foregone my right to pistols at dawn.
