Forget dictators, murders, and dentists – the real purveyors of misery in this world are hairdressers. OK, This may not be an impartial assessment – I did used to cry after every haircut as a child, resulting in long waits between visits to the salon and subsequently such terrible crimes against good taste as this abomination:
However, my current interest in this topic isn’t on my own behalf, but that of my daughter. She’s been patiently growing out a bad bleach job for the past few years, but felt that finally the time was right to spruce things up in readiness for the ball this week. She duly pitched up to a local salon on Thursday, and explained in great detail the vision she had for her new look, complete with photographs to demonstrate exactly her needs. The very nice young hairdresser smiled and nodded and agreed with everything my daughter said – and then spent the next four hours realizing her own twisted vision. My daughter was tortured with boiling hot water, weighed down with layers of smelly gunk and foil, and
then blasted with burning hot hairdryers, and eventually was rewarded with a look which was virtually the polar opposite of what was wanted. She was deeply unhappy with how it looked, so I advised her – trying to be helpful – that she should go back and get it fixed up. This time I went with her to support her and make sure all went well. Once again, the hairdresser seemed to grasp exactly what had gone wrong, and explained perfectly how she was going to fix it. Two hours later, my daughter emerged with zebra stripes in her hair. She was devastated – and the poor thing couldn’t even cry about it for fear that her new eyelashes would float away in a sea of tears. She then tried bleaching it back to square one at home, before I finally managed to persuade her to have a nap and something to eat. My heart is truly wrung. Life’s a bitch.