“I take my new haircut into town”

SATURDAY, 2pm.

I’m towel-drying my hair, meanwhile questioning the wisdom of having asked an old friend to cut it.

“I know she’s a hairdresser,” I think, rubbing my head, “but she’s also on her third glass of Chardonnay.” I watch her beadily, my doubts grave as she moves around her kitchen looking for a lighter. There’s definitely more than the usual air of incaution about her. But I’m on my second glass of Chardonnay, and feeling quite incautious myself; after she’s finished her fag I allow myself to be led to a mirror and plonked in front of it.

Wielding scissors and comb, she squeals, “I can’t believe you’re letting me do something so radical [snip, snip], I mean a chin-length bob [snip], and fringe! Oof! Look at your split ends [snip] gone [snip]… I mean your hair has been long for ever!”

“Yes,” I quaver, heart hammering, “since I was a child.”

“We need the bob [snip] to frame [snip] your face,” she says authoritatively, “Oof! I’ve been dying to do this for years [snip, snip].”

I instruct her to approach the task of cutting my hair with the same delicacy and flair that Philippe Petit showed when he walked the tightrope between the Twin Towers. Fixing her with a look, I tell her she is bound to fail in this regard if she keeps gulping Chardonnay, and if she fails, I will kill her. My heart might hammer, but I do not quaver one bit in my instruction.

“Oof! Don’t worry,” she says [snip, snip], “who’s Philippe Petit?”

There is something of the devil-may-care about her snipping.

No, I think, her snipping is not very Philippe Petit at all.

Saturday 4pm.

I take my new haircut into town for the first time. “I mean who else but a trusty old friend,” I ponder with grateful affection, bouncing along the main street, “would have been so sensitive to the thinness of that line… so alert to its dangers?”

I bounce across the road with my sharp ‘n’ sassy chin-length bob and airy neck, tossing my head in sprightly dance, wondering if a radical haircut might not be the answer to all of life’s ills.

I stop in front of a shop window to glance at my reflection. “Look at me, so sharp ‘n’ sassy,” I preen, “Why, if I tousle it like this [tousle] and primp it like that [primp], it looks even sassier!”

“I feel electric,” I think, bouncing onwards, “I feel liberated! I feel [bounce, bounce, bounce] dangerous!”

Saturday 5pm.

I drive my hair home. My husband gapes. My daughters gape. My neighbour, who is returning our wheelbarrow, gapes. I find I like their gaping very much. I like my hair. It seems we all like my hair!

Sunday, 9.15am.

I bounce out of bed to bathroom, run tap, and look in mirror. There is someone from the dark side in it, someone who, from the front at least, looks like she has a monk’s tonsure.

9.30am

I wake my daughters and assemble them downstairs, military-style. My breathing is becoming a problem. So is my daughters’ gaping. I don’t like today’s gaping at all. I point at my head with tremulous finger. “You must put to rights the terrible thing which has happened overnight,” I gasp, “you’re both hair people. You must know the answer.”

9.40am.

In Dunnes Stores, scanning aisles with bowed head, stertorous breathing and daughters’ shopping list; I will need to have my own hair equipment from now on, they said.

10am.

In my kitchen, all hands on deck; my daughters are crossing me back over from the dark side. They’re doing this with my new flat-nozzle hair-dryer, volumising mousse and round brush from Dunnes.

They promise me the terrible thing which has happened overnight has got nothing to do with thin lines and Chardonnay, “or Philippe Petit, whoever the hell he is.” They promise.

They’d better be right, and not just for my friend’s sake, for I. Cannot. Breathe. At. All. Right. Now. Over. Here. On. The. Dark. Side. No. I. Cannot.