Paper bag required

I remember reading somewhere that mosquitoes have a kind of soothing anaesthetic in them, so that you don’t actually feel them biting you until they’ve done their dirty work and made their escape. I think the same might be true of hairdressers.

The signs were there. I mean, apart from having to convey the tricky concept of “short but, y’know, not too short… long layers but not too layery, if you know what I mean” which is hard even in your mother tongue, let alone in a foreign language.

The hairdresser doesn’t do appointments, you just rock up and wait, the same way you do in a men’s barber, and instead of having that nice bit at the beginning where they offer you a cup of tea and stroke your hair in a getting-to-know-it sort of way, I told them I wanted “a cut”, then they propelled me through to the back and gave it the roughest scrubbing I’ve ever experienced.

A different person cut it, and a different person dried it, and at the end of an hour I emerged with… ringlets. Hmm. Still, I stared blankly into the mirror and thought: it’s not so bad.

“It’s very…” I struggled to find the Italian word for ‘bouncy’ and failed. Then without even thinking, a big toothy smile just spread over my face and I said. “It’s brilliant, I love it, thank you so much,” and handed over my money. It wasn’t until I got home that I looked in the mirror and wondered if I could possibly stay here for another three months, maybe with a bag over my head or something.

Later that day I ventured out on the bike to get some water in the hope that the wind might mess up the ringlets a little bit, and I found that as well as being cast-iron and wind resistant, it’s also irresistibly attractive to Codgers*. I got two beeps and a brazen stare, all from men who looked well into their 70s. Maybe I remind them of their childhood schoolteachers or something.

*NB: These were not fully fledged Codgers. Proper Codgers do not drive cars, they ride around on old bikes or 50cc motorinos at 3kph with a cigarette hanging out of their mouths and a three mile tailback behind them. It’s the only way to travel.