Thursday, September 21

I had to get a haircut yesterday afternoon; its was supposed to be last week but I forgot and had to postpone it.  I used to go to Spike's Barber Shop in Launceston which suited me fine; it was old-fashioned with rounded chrome chairs and the smell of Bay Rum, no appointments, just turn up and wait your turn. I got fed up, though, with trying to find a parking spot in the city and there were no parking stations in the vicinity.

Marilyn had opted for a salon in Longford and seemed reasonably happy so I gave them a go too, and I'm now a regular.  It's more your ladies' salon but they're happy to take blokes as well. I have a regular hairdresser who knows her stuff and happily deals with my moustache and eyebrows.

When I turned up today, the salon was full of school kids.  The waiting room only has three chairs and they were all occupied by rough-looking primary school kids with their mothers standing around with folded arms.  I wanted to tell the kids to let the adults sit down but that wasn't going to go down well.  One of the hairdressers took me through to the back of the shop and sat me down at one of the tables to wait for Brittany which gave me a chance to have a good look around.  The building is a maze of small rooms, all with three or four workstations.  I think it was the original Policee Station of the town so the rooms might have been the cells.

A hairdressing salon could be one of the nine Circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno.  This particular salon is tiny so it's crowded, the noise is appalling with hairdressers and their clients and, in today's case, the mums of the hordes of kids all yelling at each other, innumerable hairdryers all going full blast and, somewhere in the background, there is a radio tuned to some afternoon chat program.  The air is perfumed with all the noxious fluids which are part of the hairdressing ritual. There's no room to move around and the poor hairdressers have to sweep the floor after every clip to keep some semblance of order. And this particular salon has a Beverage Menu so the hairdressers have also to find time to make coffees and, worse, cocktails.  Who, in their right mind would enjoy a cocktail while the air around them is filled with flying hair particles?

Dante, of course, never experienced such a thing but I'm sure if he had he would have found room to have a tenth circle in his famous poem.

I survived and asked for my next appointment for a time when all the kids will be at school.