Imagine having to do chirpy small-talk all day long...

A hair salon in Cardiff is breaking with ancient custom by offering clients a ‘quiet chair’. 

One where you can get trimmed in glorious 3D silence. No obligation to either ask or tell where anyone is going on their holidays. No chit-chat requiring exchanges like, ‘I hear Aleppo is lovely this time of year….sorry, Ayia Napa’. Where you can sit in sanctioned silence, without ever being thought rude, no social obligation to break the blissful quiet other than to hear the gentle snip of your hair cascading around the stylist’s ankles, without ever the need for a cheery enquiry about what anyone is doing at the weekend.

It must be a relief for the hairdresser too. Imagine having to do chirpy small-talk all day long.

Then imagine an off button, where you could just flick a switch and shut them up. Well now you can — in Cardiff, at least.

We could start a petition beseeching hair salons of the world to unite in this genius concept. I’d sign it. I bet loads of hairdressers would too.

It doesn’t mean you’re rude to be in a public space and not wish to verbally interact — it just means you don’t feel the need to fill communal air with spattered words, in case the silence makes you twitchy.

And given how we have weather rather than a climate, there’s an unending source of commentary on the bleeding obvious. Looks like rain. Chilly out today.

On trains, planes and buses, we use newspapers and books — and smartphones and headphones — to signal our desire for personal silence; the bigger the city, the more silence we crave. Forcing small-talk on a packed commuter train is on par with mugging.

Once, on an empty bus chugging through a small town, the only other passenger boarded and made their way towards me. Ignoring my newspaper — the visual equivalent of wielding a shield — they launched into a full-blown conversation. Unbidden. It felt like having my newspaper ripped from my hands, my face yanked upward. I bristled. I grunted. I pointedly stared out the window.

How rude, I thought of the space invader. How rude, must have thought the other. What a stuck-up cow / intrusive cow, went the speech bubbles over our heads.

Elective non-engagement does not apply in certain places, however. Like the waxing salon. During super-intimate deforestation, best to keep up a bright steady stream of non-stop chatter. How LOVEly you’re going to FLORida on your HOLidays, you might gasp, eyes watering, as the wax lady rips and rips. Going in — oooof! — JUNE? Ow! SUper! Keep talking, no matter what.

When you are in such a vulnerable position, you need to keep your aesthetician on side.

There is no quiet chair here, only one of undignified pleading and gibbering. Because you’re worth it.