Since my move to London I have been plagued by trendy hairdressers with asymmetrical hair and European accents. They chase you down the street, approach you in Topshop and see mug written all over your face. They spot the northern twang in your accent and promise you of modelling jobs and easy money- a mistake I will pay for over the next four or five months.
So, I had already been approached by a smooth talking, Romanian hairdresser and had managed to turn his offers down. “But you have great face,” he says. “Please won’t you think about it, I will make you look great”. Mullets must be big in Romania right now.
A victim to my own vanity I accepted, ignoring any shred of common sense I had. As I walked through the flashy doors and greeted the trendy receptionist I thought, “It’ll be fine, they know what their doing. Boots sell their shampoo”.
Three hours later, I was still sat in the executions chair staring at my deranged reflection. “Stop, Stop,” I cried as he came towards me with an electric razor. “You must calm down, you are so stressed” he told me firmly. “I can’t stop now, it will be unbalanced”. With half my hair above my ears and the rest lying in straggly rat tails to my shoulders, I looked like an extra from Lord of the rings. “I don’t like it,” I said as the Creative Director poofed around me making effeminate comments such as “It’s gorgeous, wonderful, and really effective”. I looked as though I’d suffered a moment of madness and hacked at my hair with a pair of kitchen scissors. I would have fitted in famously on the set of ‘This is England’.
With tears threatening to stream from my eyes, the hairdresser took several pictures of me while a group of his colleagues cooed and complimented me. With the face of a surly child, I repeated, “I don’t like it, I look awful”. I then decided I’d had enough and put on my coat. “So you’re going then?” he asked. As I told the hairdresser, I am a writer, not a model.
One of the worst parts of this sorrowful story is the fact that I work opposite the salon. I’m now in a predicament similar to that of seeing an ex everyday. We exchange awkward hellos and I sometimes even hide. The situation is not ideal.
