Well in February there was an awful lot of fuss about the hair. Chest pains yes and many hours pinning back my hair and viewing myself from four thousand different angles to see if I’d look better with the back of my neck showing. Every time my arms got tired and the pins fell out (there were at least a dozen) and my hair fell down to my shoulders I’d think, No definitely better long. Only to gather up all the pins and start again. My poor nerves.
All because I happened to make an appointment with a rather expensive hairdresser, famed for his love of short hair. But then those canny business heads always keep you shorn to keep you coming back. There was hardly enough time to buy a glossy before D-day, though somehow I did manage to spend the equivalent of a new haircut on ten or twelve hair magazines in the space of twenty-four hours. (I had been growing my hair for two years after a very serious Neveragain story where a moment’s madness nearly cost me my sanity. Like an animal I seem not to have learned from my mistakes. Though I must be comparing myself rather with a worm who can’t remember why a flock of birds in a freshly ploughed field might be dangerous.)
I was getting it cropped one minute and layering it the next. Tying it back, with a fringe, without a fringe, heavy eye make-up, natural look, groomed, teenage, glamorous, mature, youthful, Saturday night, Monday at the office. With a black marker in my hand I labelled photo after photo of beautiful girls with fancy faces and discussed the pros and cons of their style in such detail, truly unaware of my obsession, until a friend of mine casually said, Your poor hairdresser. I caught on then that maybe I was going a little overboard. Suddenly my scribbles and comments became a ledger of my mental health, like a white crocheted hat or stripy socks and red ankle boots. So many times the ponytail in the jaws of a pair of nail scissors thinking, If I just hack it then there’ll be no choice.
So it was all about the choice. A smart friend (lover) said, You don’t have to get it cut, you know. And with this came the ultimate relief. Better than an iced lolly on a burnt tongue or a wee wee in a layby on the way back from Bangor. I could simply get a trim.
Needless to say I walked out feeling totally cheated out of my money. And I’m back at the mirror with sore arms and the bobby pins.
