Bad hair day

My hair concerns to date haven't generally amounted to more than a gradually receding hairline. That is about to change however, when after six weeks on the rails I am beginning to look like a backpacker and so decide it is time for a quick trim. I find a small salon in Van's downtown where a young barber is sitting with his feet up watching television. I check out his own hair with the mistaken theory that since he has a well groomed head, he would similarly do a good job of mine. Mistaken because I have since realized of course that a barber seldom cuts his own hair…

He ushers me to a chair with one eye still on the TV and I sit down pleased that my international finger and thumb sign for 'please just take this much off' has apparently been understood. He then stands behind me in the time honoured fashion and lifts little clumps of hair from both sides with his fingers, while looking in the mirror. Good start.

But then continuing to watch television, he fastens a cape around my neck almost throttling me and then plunges my head face first into the basin in front as if he's trying to drown me. Shampoo is slapped on and then a pause as I imagine he is transfixed by a good bit of the Egyptian sitcom. He spreads it around my head, washes it off, and then clears my nose with his fingers (thanks for that). I'm pulled back up for air and he makes a half hearted attempt to pat my hair dry with a damp rag.

Without further ado, he starts snipping away seemingly randomly, with great gusto and zero skill, like a child aspiring to play the piano. Indeed he appears to be making it up as he goes along. The scissors then come to a momentary rest on my head as he downs tool for another engrossing bit of TV.

Someone else enters the salon and sits down on the chair next to me. Turkey being a country not known for its love of queuing, the barber leaves me mid cut and goes over to give the other customer a quick nasal hair and ear trim. This leaves me with time to consider my fate and poses a bit of a dilemma. He has now about finished one side of my hair. Do I leave now while only half has been abused or do I wait for him to come back and fuck up the rest of it? In the vain hope that there must be some kind of symmetry in his butchery I sit like a mug and wait for more.

He hacks around at the other side for a few more alarming minutes and then realises that its not even. So he chops again at the original side. And back again. This continues for a few rounds, each time leaving less of my precious hair on my head. It really would be funny if it was someone else's hair. But I'm not laughing as I helplessly watch the whole horror unfold in the mirror in front of me.

While he is chopping away with all the measure and dexterity of an arthritic axe murderer, I have a worrying thought that maybe he is not a hairdresser at all. Perhaps he is actually the guy that would normally only have the pleasure of sweeping up my unwanted hair and bringing me a coffee and a copy of Hello. Perhaps while the actual hairdresser has nipped out for lunch, he has self elevated his status and thought 'I can do this. This is a piece of piss. Toni and Guy here I come. Who needs training?'

If he has been trained, it is at the Frank Abagnale school of hairdressing. He seems to be snipping happily away with the philosophy that as long as my hair looks sufficiently different from when I came in, he will have done a good job and I won't notice the deceit. He then picks up a mirror in order to show me the back, saving the most worrying revelation til last. I really don't want to look. It can't get any worse can it? It can. The clump where my hairline naturally meets in the middle has been completely removed. I have a small hole in the back of my head.

Just when I am deciding if I am going to shun all public life for a month or keep a baseball cap glued to my head, he points to a pot above the mirror. 'Gel?', his eyebrows raise to ask. Well what the hell. Go for it. He slaps on a substance smelling vaguely of petrol and randomly runs his hands through my hair a few times messing it up a bit, like they do. He's thinking, 'I'm pretty good at this, maybe it can get me out of military service'.

I stare at myself in the mirror in paralysed disbelief. I look like electrocuted road kill. This has been a bad hair day of epic misproportions. Yet after he has completely and utterly mutilated my hair, what do I do - in my very English conditioned way? Yes, I give the bastard a tip.