Finding refuge in relaxing role as a salon spy

It’s 9am on a Friday and I’m blasted in the face with warm air and the sound of KISS radio as I shuffle through the shiny door of the barbers. After more than a year of inconsistent DIY cuts, I have finally sacked my home hairdresser. Heaven knows what the barbers thought when I wandered in, tufts of varying lengths sticking out of my scalp - probably that I’d been on the run. But he doesn’t judge. And when I say ‘he’ I mean a group of men.

I am disorganised and never book but swivel-chair roulette offers a cheap thrill.

Who will I get? The scary quiet one, the one who could do with being more quiet, the one who watches cricket on his phone or the one who once stopped mid-trim for a crafty fag (he’s left now but its testament to the place that I wasn’t remotely put off).

Today the one who likes to talk beckons me over. He still has headphones in and wonders briefly why he’s finding it hard to hear. In the chair next to me is an up-andcoming professional boxer. I know this because I like boxing but also because I’m the guy who sits in silence listening; a salon spy.

The temporary custodian of my head questions my choice of a three on top.

“Very short mate.” I joke that I may as well embrace my thinning locks, partly hoping he’ll ease my concerns. “You can get spray for bald patches now,” he says. “You use it and take pills three times a week.”he’d have done it if he hadn’t flown to Turkey for a transplant.

Reporting the news feels increasingly like leaning back in a chair and plugging myself into The Matrix, staggering away at the end of the day like a mortified Neo.

It’s hard to escape from it sometimes but in a different kind of chair and listening to the news of customers’ lives I find refuge.

The barbers all went to the boxer’s recent bout. Mine tells him he was stood next to his dad, who he says at one point stood up and ordered his son to “release the beast!”

Everyone laughs.

After more than a year of inconsistent DIY cuts, I have finally sacked my home hairdresser