HAIR TEA.

With a very generous gift , a voucher for most prestigious and luxurious salon in local cathedral city , tucked into the aging Mulberry I settle into my seat and await my stylist Zalda .

I don’t remember the last time I sat in a salon for three hours, (probably more), with a newspaper and the time to read it from cover to cover plus coffee!! Whilst this may be common for many for this H.M it’s a real treat.

Enter Zalda ; she’s six inches wide, seven feet tall, completely clad in black apart from a huge silver motorcycle belt.

“Culor yes ?”

“Colour , yes lovely please”

“I vill get the book, see if ve agree on ze color, yes?”

“Great yes, absolutely”.

We agree various shades of chocolate and caramel.

“You hav thick hair I zink “

She flicks my hair nonchalantly, shrugs and goes off to mix the potions.

I settle down with the property section , well a girl can dream, and Zalda gets to work . Within an hour my hair contains many foil packets and I look ‘oven ready’, I’ve managed to glean from Zalda that it’s her last day as she was due to return to eastern Europe via Gatwick any minute. I try to chat; she’s in no mood.

“You English vomen look so yong , but zen you ‘ave no vorries. You sit now. Coffee?”

“Er yes thanks “

She’s right of course, not much civil war and grinding poverty in this neck of the woods. That notion, along with the doom and gloom headlines in the paper, stirs feelings of guilt. No now come on Sandra this is meant to be a relaxing treat, put away that burgeoning Catholicism.

So I sit and I sit and I sit.

Zalda returns, peers into the foil, sighs and shrugs, “Anzother tventy minute I zink “

She shrugs again.

“Good, all going well then?” I say encouragingly, she puffs out a breath and shrugs .I sit and sit, and then I sit for just a little longer. All hope of relaxation is fading, getting a bit stressy about the car parking, I’ll be hard pushed to make it without incurring a £15 excess charge. No, no, think positive, where’s that copy of Vogue.

Finally Zalda comes back,”It’z ok”, she shrugs.

A scented shampoo and special treatment later and I’m back in the chair.

She flicks my hair this way and that,”Ze back I like, ze front and ze sides  “, she shrugs, “no”.

“Right, well just do what you think “……..

What am I saying !! She sets about my perfumed, newly coloured luscious locks with all the dexterity of Edward Scissor Hands on speed, a terrified inner voice cries out for her to stop or there’ll be no hair left. I have a nightmare vision of her smiling down at me, “In my contry ve make tea from ze hair.”

Her hands are now a blur, I’m aware I sinking down into the chair, only to be pulled up and firmly repositioned.

Mercifully she is finished, she collects a large round brush, sets the dryer on max and 110 degrees and sets about ze blow dry. Luckily I have a scalp that is comprised of the same material that the Space Shuttle requires for it’s re entry to the Earths’ atmosphere, so simply wince my way through the procedure.

My hair is now glossy and very straight.

“If I zad ze curls like you I vould grow it long I zink “

Now she tells me!

As the smell of burning hair subsides, she rakes her fingers through it, “Zare , now you look just like ze French voman”.

Why am I thinking of ‘Allo , allo ‘.

Anyway, pay up; wish Zalda  good luck, dark glasses on and sprint to the car with ten minutes to spare.

Once home the husband sayes , ( after the predictable line “Did you get your hair done then ?” How we laughed .), that he liked the colour as do I . Star II said that he had a’ new mummy’ and that she looked ‘funny’, Star I simply said! Hi Mum “, but couldn’t crane his head away form the T.V long enough to make any appropriate comment.

I wash my hair and settle it back to its’ messy normality thanks to the aid of a great colour and cut.