Ha!  I bet you thought this would be about a bloke (probably a dark gypsy Bob) who spat at me in the street and threatened catastrophe should I not buy his wife’s lucky heather.  Well, no.  Sorry, it’s not about Gypsy Bob.  It’s about haircut bob.

I’ve just returned from the hairdressers.  Most women return from the hairdressers feeling wonderful.  They have glossy shiny, shimmery locks that they can toss carelessly in sunny locations.

I have come home with wet sticky hair.

‘It’s your own fault’  I hear you, and the hairdresser cry.

I complained. Yes I did.  Sorry.

What is it about hairdressers that they completely fail to understand it when I say

‘I don’t want it ending it up in a bob, just loose and casual.  Sticky outy instead of sticky inny.  Just scrunch dry it – it will be fine’.

I did, I said all that to her.  I did. I swear it.

So what’d she do.  She bloomin’ cut it in a bob.  She dried it in that big brush, big hair, taking forever, drying that hairdressers seem specially trained to do.  Then she straightened what she’d just done.  Then..

Then… she curled it with the straighteners.  I looked like bloomin’ Shirley Temple.  Who wouldn’t complain.  M’eh.

To be fair, my hair, being fine and straight, is inclined to look like its cut in a bob whatever the hairdresser tries to do.  Sometimes its a long bob, sometimes its short.  Even with layers it will hang straight down given the slightest encouragement with a brush.  Nobody else in the world seems to have hair that is just so very, very boring.  I have pictures of myself from an early age with a bob.  Sometimes even a bob with a big blue bow.

The bob I had in those days was (truly) the result of my mum putting a bowl over my head and cutting round it.  A curved fringe….nice.

So…this morning, instead of accepting the inevitable, I told her.

‘I look like a five year old’ I said (lets face it, she wouldn’t know who Shirley Temple was), and put my hands in the offending mop and zhoozhed ( don’t know if this is the correct spelling of zhoozhed, but do let me know if you know different).

‘Do you want it diffused’ she asked

‘eh?’ I responded with my usual eloquence.

‘I’ll spritz it’  For those unfamiliar with the technical terms, that means spraying it with water.

So she did.  She spritzed it, until it was dripping wet around my shoulders.  She’d already stuck half a ton of mystery product on my hair which didn’t take kindly to being dampened. Nevertheless, I zhoozhed it again. Goodness knows what the other victims/customers thought.  Let’s hope they were thinking

‘Blimey, I wish I could be that self-assured and rebellious’

Though it was probably more like

‘What does she think she looks like?’ whilst feeling sorry for the young bint that was doing her best to drown me.

Actually, now I’m home and have tweaked it, it looks ok. Sticky outy in a tousled sort of damp way.

Just like I wanted.