Hairs and Graces

You might have guessed this by looking at my pixelated visage, but I hate haircuts. They are an activity that makes filling in a tax return feel like a naked fire-walking party.

You count the forty-six rings it takes an overworked receptionist to be jolted out of her hairspray-induced stupor and answer as you call up to book "an appointment". It sounds like an STD check-up.

"Sorry," she says, sounding as if she's got a clothes peg on her nose, "We've only got a slot with Gemma at 7.30 on Wednesday." This is the least convenient time imaginable for a haircut, as you have to reckon with an oestrogen drenched mood bag eager to enjoy her day's first chilled rose and sixtieth cigarette.

At this time of night, they have ceased to care if you leave looking like Michael Score; they want only to deprive you of your glossy locks before prodding you out the shop with a pair of clippers.

You arrive, hair embarrassingly windswept and get sat down in the chair. The "stylist" asks what you want. At this point, the resolve you possessed when you left the house to go for a "radical summer do" has withered like a two-day old party balloon. You end up sheepishly muttering something about "tidying up the sides" as they look around the room like a startled meerkat, not remotely listening.

You then go for the wash, where a tiny and improbably strong lady forces your neck into the bowl, bringing back memories of primary school "flushings" at the hands of sweating bullies.

You're asked: "How's the temperature?" Whether the water freezes solid upon contact with your skin or it is so hot that your scalp blisters off like a Chenobyl fireman, the answer to this question is always, inevitably: "Yeah, it's fine."

Why do they ask us such questions if they know they will unfailingly get a dishonest and nondescript answer? The same occurs at the end of the ordeal, when they show you the back of your head (a deeply unsettling view, akin to a fume-induced out of body experience) and vaguely enquire: "How's that for you?"

They could have shaved off all your hair without your permission. They may have dyed a black swastika on your forehead. They may have well replaced your eyebrows with stickers saying "fuck Bush" and you still would be unable to muster anything more eloquent than:

"Yeah, that's great thanks."

What? Surely, if these scissor-wielding waifs are being paid to ensure you can walk in public without a paper-bag covering your crown, then they shouldn't have to ask for your approval? It is their job. They should know it's bloody OK; they are the ones who have been staring stupidly at the back of your poor head for the last hour (or four).

No matter how it looks like they've poked at your barnet with the jaws-of-life, you'll never tell them. You, like me, will just stare disbelievingly in the mirror at the bird's nest that used to be your hair and vacantly confirm that no, I wasn't being sarcastic when I asked for a tidy-up.

We say nothing because we wish to avoid hurting their clearly fragile feelings. We say nothing because we want to get out of the chair in which we've spent our recent history scrutinising our unpleasant face in an unflattering mirror. We say nothing because, obviously, they have a sharp, lethal instrument clutched in their painted claws.

You need to put a tremendous about of trust in your hairdresser; not to make your hair look trendy, but for them not to sneeze and slice your ear off.

Judging (probably unfairly) from the type of men and women who end up as hairdressers, they are not the kind of people who won every event on sports day. They are clearly unco-ordinated.

My haircut two before last was administered by an Italian woman who's gesticulations during the story of her trip to Thailand were performed while swishing her scissors dangerously close to my jugular. I didn't care about the cut, and I did little to disguise my relief in surviving the ordeal with all my facial outcrops still attached as I practically shouted: "Yeah that's really great thanks."

Not only are they potentially dangerous, hairdressers are unforgivably boring.

A friend has suggested the opening of a "Silent Salon," in which the hairdressers are forbidden to speak to the customers and vice-versa. This may result in some hilariously mis-judged and unasked for cuts, but it would alleviate that terrible anxiety you experience in desperately racking your brains for things to say.

I have nothing in common with hairdressers. I am not better than them, nor more intelligent. But I cannot abide small talk, especially when there is no way of you escaping the forced conversation. It would be impractical to get up and talk to someone else with half of your head shaved. You are there at their pleasure. You will leave, and these inane dialogues will end, when the hairdresser says so. Not a minute before.

Another friend claimed to have once spent four and a half hours sat helplessly in the chair of a Vidal Sassoon academy, only for his hair to look utterly uncut. It was as if the trainee had placed a huge beehive wig on his head and proceeded to snip airily away at it for the best part of an afternoon. These four hours shall never be relived or better spent, destined to belong to this wisp with a pair of misguided scissors forever. How dare he.

I was curious as to how these pair of men filled the relentless minutes with speech. Apparently, not much more than the weather and each other's favourite shirts were discussed.

You shouldn't be forced into conversing with someone performing a service. It would be like your taxi-driver wanting to talk to you about your taste in Lebanese Restaurants, or being pinned down by the plumber and having to listen to tales of his Benidorm booze-cruise.

During my last haircut (I don't mean ever, unfortunately) I was in and out in half an hour; Gemma was clearly eager to teeter on her heels across the road for a Babycham. In between my instructions and my timid approval not a word was spoken. It was fantastic - so much so, I didn't even care that Gemma had plainly ignored my advice to "not take too much off" and had instead done whatever she fancied.

The only other people you pay to stand uncomfortably close behind you for over half an hour are prostitutes and private investigators. And it's normally best not to speak to them.