Hairy situation

Last time I visited my hairdresser, things got a little … well … hairy. While I was looking for a parking spot, a guy collapsed on the pavement and started having a fit. By the time I’d parked the car, a large crowd of people and a policeman had gathered around him. They looked like they had the situation under control, plus I was running late for my appointment, so I dashed across the road to the salon, only to find more police milling around. There was also lots of screaming and smashing noises, as the contents of a first-floor apartment were tossed into the lane by a deeply distressed person. The police were just standing around (waiting for her to calm down, apparently), recording the action on their mobile phones. I’m presuming they were doing this as evidence for later, but maybe it was to show their mates at the pub.

I decided the fitting guy and the hysterical woman had been involved in a domestic together – but my hairdresser had a chat to the coppers and discovered the two incidents were entirely unrelated. Just another action-packed day on the beat in Darlinghurst.

My hairdresser had only moved into the salon a few weeks earlier. Talk about a dramatic introduction to the neighbourhood.

So I approached my appointment yesterday with mild trepidation. But no-one fitted on the pavement and no-one screamed and threw things out windows. The sun shone brightly. Lots of cool people lounged around in cafes. I bought a couple of over-priced duck and banana flower ricepaper rolls for my lunch from a groovy little joint called Mrs Chu’s. It was very inner-city civilised.

I was visiting the hairdresser for my fourth-in-a-lifetime dye job. I’m still not getting the dyeing thing. I mean, I get the fab results. But the effort involved seems way out of proportion to the palaver involved. I can’t believe it’s still so archaic. I mean, we have iPads and shite like that and it still takes two-and-a-half hours to dye someone’s hair … seriously? How do working mothers find the time to do that every six weeks?

Don’t get me started on how much it costs either, that’s still at VCRs-have-just-been-invented prices too.

Then there’s the discomfort. It felt like a cow with a big, cold tongue was licking my head, as the colourist went swish, swish, swish on my scalp with her brush. I kept shuddering like someone was walking over my grave. Goosebumps everywhere. She reckons some people love it. They are weird.

At the end, the assistant gave me a blow-dry and got all nervous when I started giggling uncontrollably. She thought she’d done something wrong but I was just marvelling at how my hair looks when it’s blow-dried because that never normally happens.

So here’s a photo of me with blow-dried hair, take a good look because you won’t be seeing me looking like that again for a long time. Well, not until my next extravagant dye-job. It’s a good thing I’ve finally cut the cleaner down to once a fortnight – I am a paragon of budgeting virtue, no? – or I’d have to start hawking myself on (dimly lit) street corners to pay for it.