My hairdresser threatened to call the police on me last week.
No, I didn’t run at her with the scissors after discovering my haircut was more ‘V for Vendetta’ than ‘Victoria Beckham’; and no, we didn’t just have a nasty disagreement over the temperature in the wash basin.
In fact, I’m not normally a public-confrontation kind of person at all, and I really didn’t see this situation coming.
The hair appointment started out perfectly nicely, with herbal tea and reality television chatter aplenty. You know the drill: your colourist asks what you’re after, you say, ‘half a head of foils, a little trim and don’t worry about the treatment because I’m on a budget, thanks very much’.
The sun was shining outside; I grabbed a magazine of the sort I’d never be seen reading in public; my colourist mixed her little plastic dish of ammonia-scented hair chemicals — and away we went, swapping life stories and news of our love lives.
But two hours later, when I pulled out my wallet to settle the tab, the situation became more Fight Club than Gossip Girl.
“That’ll be four hundred and twenty dollars,” the reception lady enthusiastically chirped at me, proffering a complimentary mint my way.
I started, my belly flipping anxiously. The price was a good hundred dollars more than my usual fee, and my bank balance was perilously low following a solid week of Christmas spending.
I asked for a price breakdown. Extremely Chirpy Reception Lady offered me a little slip of paper — which declared I’d been given a three-quarter head of colour.