HAIR TODAY

My regular hairdresser of some five years' standing, Nicolala, is a treasure. He greets me effusively on arrival, discusses what I would like done and then does exactly what he wants. He alone knows the reference number of my hair colour which, after several initial mistakes, is exactly the right shade of auburn. He is 50-something, Italian-Belgian, as camp as a row of tents, and can cut my hair exactly how I like it in 15 minutes. He only takes one client at a time, so each client gets his undivided attention. The salon ambience is provided by Radio Nostalgie which plays 70's hits non stop. If Nicolala is in a particularly good mood he might do a bit of disco dancing. He brings me the latest issue of Allo! and a cup of coffee while the colour is taking. He wears a butcher's apron over tracky bottoms and an old style polo shirt to work in. His frizzy grey hair is sometimes left loose, which makes him look a bit like an elderly drag queen, and sometimes scraped back in a pony tail. He tells me all about his boyfriend, his cats, and his diets. If I meet him in the street he stops and kisses me on both cheeks flamboyantly. I love him to bits, and take him presents sometimes.

I wonder what is the attraction of disco?

Unfortunately Nicolala is on his holidays this week, so I had to find another place to get my titian tresses trimmed before my trip to Blighty. I headed for a well known chain about which I have heard good things. Unfortunately, I must have found the training branch. There were no clients in the salon - it was midday on the first Friday of the new year, so par for the course. Two black-clad children were running the place. It took two of them to hang my coat up, then one sat me down in front of a mirror and played at being a grown-up person. I told her what I wanted and what instruments she was allowed to use. Thinning scissors are forbidden. She nodded adultly and passed me to her mate who was to wash my hair.

"Is the temperature all right?" she asked.

"I don't know, the water hasn't reached my scalp yet" I replied.


As she washed my hair, the other child stared fixedly. I felt one of my coughing fits coming on, and asked her for a glass of water.

"Are you ill?" she asked in the same tone of voice you would use to ask if someone had been on their holidays yet. I decided against revealing the saga of the 3-year mystery cough and replied:

"I'm getting over a cold, yes."

"You need to wrap up warm," she advised in the patronizing tone of one teaching her grandmother to suck eggs, "You should wear a scarf." I did not deign to point out that she had just hung up my scarf in her closet.

Washing-child waved a tube of conditioning cream somewhere in the vicinity of my head. Then I got the head massage. Oh how I hate the head massage. And she wasn't very good at it, pressing against my temples as if attempting a Filipino lobotomy. I thought the two girls were in all likelihood trainees and didn't want to interrupt their learning curve. A slightly older girl had disappeared upstairs earlier with a chap. Obviously a men's salon.

After the washing, I was passed back to the first child. She was very sweet and obliging, and about 15. We agreed that she would do a minimal cut to start, and then cut more if required. Her cutting was, to say the least, instinctive. She didn't section the hair off but seemed to be grabbing chunks at random. We had a fairly long discussion about how short she should cut it over the ears.

"Leave it up to the bit where it flicks up, then cut the rest off."

"Some people like to leave it longer over the ears."

"Well I don't."

"You can always blow dry it straight,"

"You can always just cut it off."


While she snipped she asked me if I'd had a good Christmas and New Year. I told her fair to middling. I left out the bit about not going out in order to avoid the hordes of brainless teenagers in the town centre, to spare her feelings. She seemed disappointed I didn't show any interest in how she had spent the holiday.

Her cutting was slow. Extremely slow. By the time she had finished, the bulk of my hair had dried to a frizz (as I had told her it would). She said "But it's nice to have curly hair, isn't it?" looking with insincere admiration at the candyfloss-like Mohican sitting on top of my head. "Why don't you try wetting it again before you blowdry?" I suggested.

The older teenager, who turned out to be the "senior stylist", came down from upstairs and made a few adjustments to the bits round the ears.

"Is it a perm?" she asked. I ground my teeth.

She asked where I was from originally.

"English," I replied. "Why, do I have an accent?"

"No, no, you haven't got any trace of an accent. Has she?"

The other girl opened her eyes wide in mock amazement and said "No! Not a trace of an accent."

"I love accents" she continued, pointlessly.

"So why did you ask me where I was from?" I asked.

"Pardon?"

"If I don't have any accent, how - did you know - I wasn't Belgian?" (enunciating in an exaggerated fashion)

"Oh, the way you look."

I didn't press the point further. The answer would probably not have been flattering

After a suitably telling silence, I ventured: "You know, in London, people don't tend to ask other people about their origins,"

"Oh? Why not?"

"Because the population in London is so diverse, you'd be asking every other person. And some people find it a bit intrusive."

The senior stylist, who was obviously of Moroccan extraction, looked gormlessly at the child doing my hair, who was visibly of Indian origin, and then said:

"Did you have a good Christmas and New Year, then?" before disappearing back upstairs. The bloke had not reappeared.

Amy Winehouse's former hairdresser was apparently
on drugs too - not that you'd have guessed

A period of blissful non-conversation followed, while the child-stylist painstakingly blowdried thick hanks of my crowning glory which were already dry, holding the hairdrier awkwardly with the nozzle actually touching the hair, between brief whiffs of the smell of burning follicles. I suggested she wet it again. I wanted to suggest she give me the hairdrier and let me do it myself. I cursed Nicolala for being on holiday just when I needed him.

I glanced at the magazine rack. The choice was between "Gala" (the Belgian OK!) and "Oops!" I was not offered a cup of coffee. The music was loud, I think it might have been Lady Gaga, and then some bloke singing to his girlfriend about what he would do when he was on top of her. Love songs are not very subtle these days are they?

The cut in the end was not too bad, but my fringe was in my eyes. I asked her to cut it a bit shorter. She snipped vaguely in front of my face and some dust fell to the floor.

"It's still in my eyes."

She snipped the air again and a few more specks of dust fell.

"It's STILL in my eyes."

"I think it kind of suits you long, though."

"That's not the point. I can't see and it's actually touching my eyeballs."

Snip, snip. Oh I can always finish it off at home, I thought.

"You have to consider comfort as well as beauty," I told her.

"Pardon?"

"COMFORT - ALSO - IMPORTANT" I shouted as if to a deaf person.

"Oui."

Not even "Oui, Madame." Honestly, young people.

This is more or less what my haircut looked like when she'd finished.

a snip at 50 euros