Tonight I dragged myself down to a local salon and paid nearly £30 to get my hair chopped. And to be perfectly honest, I begrudged every penny.
Actually, I didn't begrudge the first £20 worth of it. Alright, I'd stretch to £22. But the rest of it feels like blood being sucked out of my body through the pores. Because I think the price of women's hairdressing these days is just obscene and it annoys the bejesus out of me.
What's even worse about tonight's expenditure, was that the final cost was minus a 50 per cent online discount. So the guy who basically gave me a significant trim usually charges £56 for the privilege. I wouldn't mind if I was having hugely complicated cuts done, with fringes and feathering and colours and highlights and Brazilian blowdrys and god knows what else. But I'm not. I'm essentially just having the ends cut off, for god's sake, so I think it's just extortionate.
In my late teens and early 20s, I was reasonably adventurous and got my hair chopped and changed every few months. But nowadays, because I know roughly the sort of style I want - low maintenance, no colouring, no reason for it to cost more than £20 to be maintained, if that - and because I'm fed up with the spiralling cost of getting some slack-jawed bimbo or himbo to do it, I've started to neglect my hair rather shamefully.
Which means that although I might look reasonably neat for a couple of weeks after the cut, for the remaining four or five months until my next appointment, I look like I've stuck my finger in a handy light socket while sucking on a damp flannel. So I really do need to start prioritising it, but I just refuse to be fleeced, both literally and metaphorically.
For the last couple of years, I've shuffled around the various salons in my home town, just choosing whichever company happens to have a discount voucher in the paper that week and never using the same one more than once. The annoying thing is that my lack of love for any one salon does not just come down to the eye-popping prices. I have also failed to find a single place that makes me feel remotely comfortable in the big black chair.
These cavernous places are always achingly cool and the moment the uber-trendy stylist approaches me, I feel roughly 68 years old and about as well groomed as Stig of the Dump. Nine times out of ten, they have absolutely nothing to say to me and seem to be entirely lacking in the warm social skills for which hairdressers always used to be renowned. And that is another damn good reason why I just don't enjoy getting the mop chopped anymore. Sadly, it doesn't look like tonight's experience will bring my eternal hunt for a satisfactory salon to an end.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't terrible. But it didn't start off that well. As I swung in through the big glass doors, my heart sank - huge white box with pointless pictures on the wall? Check. Young, boho chic, absurdly coiffeured, slightly vacant assistants? Check. Me wanting to just put up with crap hair for the rest of my life rather than submit to an hour of humiliation at the hands of the Stepford Wives? Check.
To be fair, the assistant who washed my hair was nice enough and chatted to me a bit, even if her vigorous technique left me feeling like a crusty Labrador getting its yearly bath. It was just a shame that I couldn't make out what she was saying, due to that appalling Hollyoaks drawl that all 'youngsters' seem to adopt these days. But soon I didn't have to worry about not being able to understand her, as I could no longer hear her, thanks to the perforated eardrum I suffered when she turned on the hose. Still, at least that proved a distraction from the steady stream of lukewarm water that was soon gushing under my collar and pooling in my bra.
When I was finally plonked back in the stylist's chair and suffering that uncomfortable feeling of vulnerability I always get in that situation - having to stare at myself with my wet hair twisted up in a slipping turban and make-up running all over the place, feeling about as alluring as an Auschwitz shower cubicle - I saw my stylist looming up in the mirror behind me and thought for a moment he'd accidentally strayed away from a nearby graffiti workshop for juvenile delinquents. Either that, or I was on the set of Wackaday. Boasting 80s throw-back neon trainers, a baseball cap at a dubious angle and a little shoulder bag that was more redundant than Gordon Brown, he made an arresting sight.
To be quite fair, he was actually alright. Though clearly at the back of the queue when senses of humour were being handed out, he chatted amiably and agreed that silent, intimidating salons were really rather horrid. When he'd finished nibbling away with his scissors, I was pleased with the result. Or at least, no more disappointed than usual that a long-awaited trip to the hairdresser had once again failed to transform me into Angelina Jolie.
By skillfully averting my eyes from the amount while keying in my card pin number, I managed to forget - briefly - about how much I was paying this chap for delivering one of Life's more mediocre experiences. I even managed to avoid touching the hair I could feel wisping around my face as I stood there, even though both he and I knew that as soon as I was around the corner, I would be furiously running my hand through my hair to get rid of the self-conscious mannequin feeling and thus undoing all his good work.
But just as I was about to make my getaway, he asked me if I'd like to book my next appointment now, thereby saving 10 per cent on my next cut. With a cold chill I remembered that this was the £56 guy, so even with that generous discount, I'd still be expected to shell out half a ton to have about an ounce of hair removed. An amount that I was never going to pay, not in a million years. And yet, as our eyes met, I knew I couldn't refuse. It was like being asked for a second date by someone you think is okay and would be decent enough company at the cinema, say or a day trip to the zoo, but the thought of doing the horizontal tango with them makes you feel a trifle unwell.
So I booked. And of course I'm going to cancel. But that now means that I can't ever go back there to see a cheaper stylist. It would be like dating an ex's friend in their favourite pub. It would just be awkward, us glaring at each other through the multi-reflected mirrors like baleful ghosts.
So my brief encounter with that salon will have to remain just that. C'est la vie.
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