I hate hairdressrs!

I don't like hairdressers. I hate sitting there in the ultra glamorous salon while some tiny little 25 year old (senior) consultant debates whether my mangy head of hair can be saved with some fifty Euro new treatment or if I should go for a GI Jane cut "oh, but you don't have the cheekbones love!"

Now I have colour in my hair, my natural hair is really dark brown but recently the grey has started to poke it's head out so I get a few blonde and brown highlights in my hair to distract form this, I like it it's fine and even though my roots are very dark I only go every three months to get it cut and coloured.

So tonight at six on the button I was seated in the uncomfortable black chair with a nice hole at the back to show off your ass to the rest of the salon, a lovely girl came over to say my normal hair dresser had gone home sick and would it be OK if Enrique did my hair.....warning bells! Ok, I was there now, I wasn't gonna go home, what could go wrong. I like the other girl not because she is a great hairdresser, I like her cos she doesn't talk....no crap about holidays or kids or boyfriends...bliss.

So the indignities began, wrapped in a couple of towels and an black cape I was forced to stare at myself in the mirror, I've often wondered at people who can just sit in the hairdressers and look at themselves in the mirror, how do you do that? What are they thinking? "Oh Sorcha, you look hot with this black dye plastered all over your head....time to get the botox redone an eyebrow moved there!" I had to look at myself while she asked me a few questions last of which I answered "Yes please, black, no sugar". A couple of magazines I'd never read (they don't let people over a size 14 even look at them in Easons) were thrust in my lap along with the coffee and six chocolate sweets...bless! Obviously the saw how dangerously underweight I am and decided an intervention was in order...or they wanted to see if the fat woman would eat all the chocolates while looking at herself in the mirror (luckily I'd eaten a suckling pig in the car before I went in so I was able to resist)!


Then Natalie the "colour technician" began pulling my hair, painting on gloop and wrapping it in paper and plastic yokes...the result was after an hour of this my head hurt and I looked like a crazy alien (the good thing was Natalie wasn't a talker so I could read my book). Now I was thrown under a heat lamp and started to BBQ my head for half an hour, another coffee, but no chocolate this time. Bing! time is up, Enrique appeared, a bald blur of energy from Argentina, with broken English (peppered with a lot of Spanish when he talked about home), I wasn't sure if he understood what I was trying to convey, " I know my hair is falling out, yes I know it's got brittle hair disease but I like it", "Okay, it's okay", and he rushed me over to the vibrating chairs at the hand basins to rinse my hair, there I had the roughest shampoo I've ever had in my life....really horrible.


Enrique plops me in front of the mirror again, oh I look so unattractive now, the black cape, the black baby bags under my eyes, the wet slicked back hair! he starts talking at fifty to the minute, and the scissors clip clip clip!

An hour later, yes an hour for just the cut and blow dry (he kept stopping when he spoke to me, at one point he even mimed shooting off his penis at the thought of having children it was half hair cut, half performance art), he is finished and I staggered to the car, I look shorter and sharper than before I suppose, Hubby likes it! And Enrique? Will I ask for him next time....I think so!