Hair

Down the hill in Chalk Farm I'm waiting for Valerie to cut my hair and feeling sorry for the Chinese hairdresser. Everyone is requesting Valerie cuts their hair. The woman with a child who is just a big ball of hair huffs when she is told Valerie isn't available. She begrudgingly agrees the Chinese hairdresser is to cut her hairy child's hair. The Chinese woman maintains a dignified air of bonhomie. As she sets about cutting enough hair to reveal the face of  the huffy woman's child, another customer comes in and requests Valerie. I sit in my chair feeling guilty that Valerie is going to cut my hair.

I always choose the moment I'm sitting in the hairdresser's chair, her with scissors at the ready, to decide my hair looks great as it is and plan my escape still wearing the hairdresser's cape if necessary. I always ask for not very much hair to be taken off at all but ask for it to be more choppy. Whether this means anything to Valerie or not I don't know, it's just a term I picked up in a Liverpool hairdressers.

She tends to wet my hair down so it looks as terrible as it can and then puts it into a side parting when I always have it forward and I worry she's going to ruin it. But then a few minutes of chopping later she's drying my hair and it looks blonder than ever and a thousand times better than it did before I entered the shop. Hairdressers always style your hair so it looks tremendous. A haircut never looks better than in the Hairdresser's mirror. 

I walk up the hill a happy man, happy with his hair. I could never get a good quiff though. Not like Ringo with his Rory Storm and the Hurricanes look. I keep walking up the hill, keeping Ringo's quiff from mind, refusing to check my hair in the reflection from car windows, concentrating instead on the blond image left in the hairdresser's mirror.