Hairdressers. A great blessing. Especially when you reach the age when all women go blonde.
I'm there, going blonde at my kitchen table on which there are two take-away containers that until half an hour ago held the remains of last night's curry but, since being heated up by younger son, lie scraped out and greasy like a washed-up politician. Unlike, say, the dish he ate from, which sits beside the sink bathed only in its own filth. He meanwhile has returned to his place on the sofa, similarly bathed, to continue winning the UEFA cup with an all Palestinian team - and yep, I know that this - geographically speaking - is not possible, but leave it. I have. Along with his dishes.
The hairdresser has been here for an hour doing first eldest daughter who has begun to practice early for blondeness no doubt fearing that she has inherited the snowy genetic legacy of my grandmother who was white at the age of 32. She was booked a month ago to get daughter ready for Oxford (hair, apparently, an integral part of the PhD process) and me for my romantic weekend with Worcester man in Bruges where we had hoped not to emulate the eponymous film. In fact, I was more worried, haunted even, by the ghost of Observer columnist Kathryn Flett's melancholy travel piece written many years ago when she and her husband went off for their own romantic weekend and while there he told her he wanted a divorce. She then chronicled it exactly as it unravelled in the article. It was like reading emotional porn. I couldn't help but think that this was a very bad omen. Kathryn Flett's emotional meltdown, coupled by the fact that in the early days of our relationship my ex once told me he had to go on a business trip to Bruges and went instead on a driving holiday to Wales (I know go figure - who would lie to go to ruddy Wales?) have not endeared me to the place. I had hoped that Worcester and I winding our way in a lover's clinch, not to mention cliche, alongside lamplit canals would break the Curse of Bruges for all humanity.
Unfortunately he had to cancel a couple of weeks ago because it coincided with taking his son up to college. So Bruges is unredeemed as a place of bad bloody luck. But I'm still getting my hair done.
So I'm all blonded up with nowhere to go. Apart from Fay Weldon's book launch later in the evening at the Arts Club that, until a few hours previously, I thought was the Chelsea Arts Club (luckily I found out before I rocked up in Old Church Street.
'Shame about your weekend, hey?' The hairdresser says as she towels my hair and then does that thing where she squints at my wet hair and seems to know the colour is just the right shade of bottle.
'Yeah, it's a shame,' I agree while looking at the orange grease stains underneath the empty curry cartons.
'Are you planning something else then, hey? You should just tell him, man, you got to take me somewhere else now...' She taps her 't's out like tent poles in her crisp S'th 'Frican accent that occasionally lapses into Afrikaans when she gets really incensed which is often, especially when talking about her 'usband and 'es mother'.
I tell her another date has already been put forward. Though we're definitely not going to Bruges.
'Hm, I should bloody think so, man. 'E should spoil you. Make it up to you, hey?' She raps me on the scull with her pointy comb that the Vietcong could have used for torture. ' So, do you want a blow dry?'
I have plenty of time to do it myself, so I decline.
'Come on, aren't you going to a party? Let me blow dry your 'air. I won't charge you for it. I like it when you look nice. You look bloody great for your age, man. My mother 'as 'ad everything done and she don't look 'alf as good as you.'
I mumble modestly, but she's got the hair dryer out and neither of us can hear anything for the roar as she starts yanking my head over to one side with the force of her curly brush. As I said, torture...
She blows and curls, blows and curls and blows and curls as my head is pulled this way and the other and eventually she stands back and regards me approvingly though I still have one of her brushes wound round the hair on my crown like an axe.
'That's better. I like you to leave you looking really good. That blonde, man, it was the best thing you ever done. You got great 'air.'
I beam up at her feeling momentarily transformed into a Clairol advert.
'You know what you should do now?'
'No,' I smile, I like to think beatifically.
'Save up some money and at Christmas go away and treat yourself...'
I try to interrupt to tell her that this is exactly what I'm planning on doing - that my younger daughter and I are going off to Florence for a holiday - just the two of us - but before I get the words out she tugs the last hairbrush out of my hair and lets it fall over my brow in a big curl. Smoothing it out of the way, she strokes the side of my face and continues - all the time scrutinising me closely...
'...yeah, man, save up and go orf and have your eyes done. 'E won't cancel 'is bloody weekend away with you then, hey?'
As I said, sometime hair can be something of a torture...
