Google “cheating on hairdresser” and you get over three quarters of a million results. Some telling you how to do it, some telling you it is the best thing they ever did, some saying they regretted it the second the stylist made the first cut and are now wearing a hat for eight weeks. My reason for cheating on my hairdresser recently was a little less complicated and was more of a one night stand than a long term affair so I hoping I might be forgiven.
I was actually going to start this post with a clickbait title about cheating on B. How I had been away from home and how the urge had overwhelmed me so I had cheated on B and was now seeking forgiveness. You see my stylist is called Billie, and obviously Mr B is, well, Mr B so it would have been an easy angle to take. A cheap gag. Until my kids said “do you really want people Googling you and reading that, thinking Mummy Barrow is confessing to cheating on her husband? Seeing the first paragraph and not reading any further”?
Good point well made kids.
Though I do still feel I need to confess to this misdemeanour as it weighs heavily on my mind. And the parallels to it feeling like an affair don’t stop there. It was the typical scenario for an affair. I was away from home, it was a spur of the moment thing, not planned but just kind of happened and was over within an hour of me deciding to go ahead with it.
I have been seeing my stylist for awhile and we have a lovely friendship where she knows what I want, how the right hand side of my hair at the front has a mind of its own, how layers are a disaster, and where I like my parting. She knows I love the head massages offered by one particular junior and that I always say yes to a treatment after the shampoo because drying my hair every day every day leaves it looking and feeling decidedly “nesty” after six weeks. And it is always six weeks between visits, the next one booked at the end of the current visit.
Which is where the opportunity to cheat arose.
I found myself hurtling up the M6 very last minute last week, preying I would get to a hospital in Macclesfield “in time”. I did thankfully but somewhere around Crewe I realised I had an appointment booked for the following day I wasn’t going to make so had to cancel. Whilst also knowing that at the end of the week it was my birthday and I looked like Sideshow Bob which isnt an attractive look on a greying soon to be 50 year old woman. Knowing I couldn’t get an appointment with Billie later in the week Mr B suggested that I might try somewhere locally.
All well and good until you have to explain why you are there and what you want. The first bit was easy, the second wasn’t. I wanted ‘the usual’ but poor lady who happened to have me fill her next available slot had no idea what ‘the usual’ was. Didn’t know what length my fringe should usually be or that the bit at the front on the right isn’t always at right angles to my head. Let alone that I like my tea with no milk and will never say no to the mini bag of cheese and chive pretzels on offer.
A week later and it does feel like I have had a one night stand. I have her number thanks to Google, but she doesn’t have mine, and deep down I know I will never see her again despite suggesting I might if the situation ever arose again. I feel sad that I have done this, even though it is a cracking hair cut and she absolutely did what I wanted her to do. There is also still the hurdle of explaining to Billie what I have done.
I am hoping she will forgive me, I guess we will find out in six weeks.
photograph of hairdresser courtesy of fratic00 on Shutterstock