Good Hair Day

Catastrophy! The hairdresser never turned up.

I phoned the hairdresser, Jenny, last night to remind her about the practice wedding hairdo, and she sounded flustered. Obviously she’d forgot. “Sorry about this but can we do it a bit earlier?” she said. “I’m going to a hair competition at Blackpool in the afternoon.
“How much earlier?” I asked alarmed.
“10.30.”
“O.K. but I’ll have to ask Kathryn.” I shouted Kathryn who immediately wanted to cancel the whole thing. I persuaded her that we’d have to start from scratch looking for another hairdresser and it was best to give Jenny a chance. We agreed to 10.30am. It should have been 3.00pm.

On waking this morning, I found a note had been shoved through the letterbox from Jenny saying that she’d been called into work and couldn’t come. My heart sank as I shouted the news to Kathryn. “I knew we should have cancelled last night,” she said impatiently.
“It’s done now, so no use getting upset,” I said trying to calm her down. “Why don’t you try the hairdresser round the corner and see if they can fit you in?” It was a long shot but I thought it worth trying when she'd come all the way from London for this.

She rang but no one was in. We ate our breakfast porridge glumly while discussing the unreliability of mobile hairdressers, and hairdressers generally, as just as you get used to them they leave. At 10.00 Kathryn got through to the salon and, thank God, they fixed her up with an appointment for 1.00 pm with Michel, who was alleged to have won competitions in his ‘hair ups’.

Michel lived up to his reputation and created a stunning hairdo, very Audrey Hepburn, with the hair swept right off Kathryn’s face and curled up on top. Kathryn was delighted. She has naturally curly hair. I like it curly and wanted her to have a curly style for her wedding as I think it looks romantic, but when I saw her with this sleek and sophisticated style, I wanted to cry she looked so lovely.

I had my hair blow dried straight while I was waiting for her, as we were going to my friend’s sixtieth party later that night. We booked Michel for the wedding.

Eva, the beautician arrived on time to do Kathryn’s trial makeup, and did a wonderful job. She works with me at the college, but also does mobile. You could tell Kathryn had makeup on but it was very natural.

Kathryn left her hair up for the sixtieth party. To complement the hair style, she wore a plain black silk shift dress with crystal earrings (a leaving present from her last job) and a crystal necklace left to her by her Nan. Numerous times during the party I’d look up and wondered who the sophisticated young women was. She stood out amongst the crowd. “She looks like visiting royalty.” I said to Dan.

The DJ at the party knew Jon. He was at school with him. He remembered Dan taking him and Jon blackberrying in the country lanes near our house. I couldn’t remember him and neither could Dan, but Jon had a lot of friends. He said he would DJ at Jon’s fortieth party next year, eleven months after his release.

Copyright © 2007 Barbara Attwood