‘All my head needs is a corn dolly,’ said my husband, gazing gloomily into the mirror. ‘A what?’ I asked.
‘You know, those things thatchers plait from straw and put up on cottage roofs as a sort of signature.’
‘What made you think of thatching?’ I asked, but then I looked at his hair and saw what he meant. There are still an awful lot of short-back-and-sides barbers about and while my spouse does not see himself as another Jimi Hendrix, neither does he fancy the sides of his head pruned down to a field of stubble.
So he keeps on coming home newly mown, letting it grow out and then hacking little bits off when they tickle his ears.
‘Couldn’t you have a go at it?’ he said plaintively, but the last time I tried my hand at barbering my brother had to go to a party wearing a carefully arranged muffler. ‘Hairdressing is a gift,’ I said, peering over his shoulder at my own wayward locks. ‘And even among the practising fraternity some are more gifted that others.’
I used to have easily managed hair, but over-enthusiastic back-combing has reduced the front to frizzle. In fact there is one tuft that zooms up off my forehead like permanently escaping steam. Hopelessly I smoothed it down. Back it twanged. Just then Anna came in. ‘You look like a proper mum today,’ she said, giving me a passing hug. ‘Right, David,’ I said. ‘That settles it. You and I are going to arrange a day in town. We are going down to the King’s Road and we are going to place our heads in the hands of someone good and trendy.’
I snatched up the Sunday paper. ‘It says here that Annie Russell’s is the place. Let’s make an appointment now.’
So we went. On the way up in the train I thought about all the various hairdressers I’ve visited in my time. Although I do occasionally come home looking like a startled chrysanthemum I have to admit that hair has come a long way since those early days of corrugated waves and snail curls, thank goodness. A browse through my photograph album reveals that we had the poodle-cut phase, the page-boy look, the long horizontal sausage and a bizarre season when I was blonde from the front and brunette from the back. At one point, long hair became standard wear and I have some really terrible pictures of myself looking like a strangely immature High Court judge. Then, suddenly, hairdressing establishments whipped all those cardboard adverts out of their windows and ripped out their partitions. Young men climbed into satin shirts and Cockney accents and we all started having a high old time sitting, peeled into open plan, like rows of attentive space heroes, our eyes darting busily about beneath our helmets. I came away from one of the first of these, in Knightsbridge, with a beautifully shaped crown and the surprising discovery that beer rinses do not leave one smelling boozy. Since then I have worked my way through a wide variety of hairdressers, ranging from young mums who do it quite well at home for pin money to enthusiastic lads who make me stand up and walk about the salon. ‘It’s a question of balance,’ they murmur. ‘The overall picture must be just right.’ I have had it straightened, blistered, glued down and fluffed up. I’ve come home looking like everything from Lionel Bart to a toffee apple.
Occasionally I have been so pleased that I’ve gone to bed and slept sitting up in case I might spoil the shape. I have even come home so different that my husband has ambled into the living-room, blushed and said ‘Oh, er, hello. I thought it was my wife.’ (Thank you Evansky’s – how I enjoyed that.)
There have been sexy young men who stroke my scalp and croon to me in French. Then, just as I am going all heavy-lidded and gliding out of the door, they ruin everything by calling after me: ‘Madam shouldn’t let it grow as long as that again because Madam has a head like a football.’
Well, today we are all set to break new ground. Back-combed and thatched we wander through Chelsea in search of the celebrated Annie Russell’s.
Presently we emerge from the marigold interior transformed. My husband has super little flicky bits. And I have gone smooth. Straight away I am given the eye by a man in a pink striped shirt while my husband gets the slow stare from three little dolly birds wearing fringed hammocks.
‘Let’s go and buy some gear while we’re here.’ David’s smile is expansive.
Oh my, isn’t life just great!