A quest to find a haircut that doesn’t make my heart hurt.

Not too difficult you’d think, right? Apparently where I live, it is a bit tricky. A little while ago I resolved to stop going to the hairdresser I had been going to for, well, for a long time. It’s local, but only for the house I grew up in. Since I moved out it’s been a bit more of a trek, but I continued to go not out of some strange sense of loyalty, but just because I’ve always gone there. Then, as it ruins so many things, this long-standing arrangement was ruined by The Daily Mail. It had always been there, sitting on the side for waiting customers to peruse, should they wish. But then it began to inform her worldview. Seemingly unknowingly, she went from the friendly hairdresser I’d always had, to friendly but with a nice line in unpleasant conversation.

Our town is, supposedly, being overrun with foreign people. And not just those brown ones that are easy to spot, oh no. Polish. They’re everywhere. A factory that someone she knows works at, or someone they know, or possibly... (you get the idea; there might not have even been anyone in the first place, but anyway). This factory is, she says, something like 70% Polish, workforce-wise (gotta love the research that must have gone into coming up with that guestimate). And they’re making the pleasant, hardworking English people feel uncomfortable, like strangers in their own place of work. It’s why someone else she knows (probably) has a kid that can’t get a job now he’s graduated from University. She doesn’t seem to have noticed the flaw in this Mail-informed illogical position; that graduates tend not to apply for jobs at factories, unless either they need something temporary, or their degree meant nothing (like mine). It makes for an unhappy haircut. Now, I could engage in some political debate in an attempt to show her how much bollocks she is spouting. But I do have to travel a fair way to even get here, so I let it go, and resolve to find a hairdresser closer to home.

There’s a barber within walking distance, so I start going there. Seems reasonable. Friendly chap, decently priced. Yep this’ll do. For a bit, at least. Until one day, when over the radio comes the speech made by the unfathomably brave Malala Yousafzai when she addressed the UN in an attempt to progress her worthy goal of helping to provide education to girls in places where they don’t get it. The girl was shot in the head by someone who, at best, can only be considered an utter fucktard of the highest order, at 15 for campaigning for education for girls. Because she is fucking amazing (or because the cunt who shot her is, as mentioned, a fucktard) she survived, and was brought here to the UK for treatment. Now, if that isn’t a statement about how our health care system is world-beating, I don’t what is. Anyway, during the radio broadcast of part of her speech (is there a more eloquent way to sum up the nature of the world’s ills and the way forwards than “Education is the only solution”? No. No, there is not) my new friendly barber, calm as you like, declares his fervent wish that she just “...fuck off home.”

Now, what followed this is a rather awkward silence. Until my new friendly barber proceeded to dig himself in deeper, declaring that “I’m not being funny” while trying to point out that yes, we should treat her, but then simply ship her back, because we already have enough people over here that shouldn’t be here. Perhaps I should have pointed out that in doing that, the most likely outcome would have been said fucktard doing his damndest to finish the job, so why even bother treating her at all? Unfortunately, I had been focusing all my energies on trying to stop myself bursting into tears from the first moment he’d spoken. One of my problems is a distinct lack of balls in situations such as this. Maybe I should have responded with ‘no you’re not being funny, you’re being a cunt’. As it was, I stayed quiet, paid for my haircut, left and resolved not to return.

Luckily, I’m not yet out of options, as there are about another four hairdressers within walking distance, including one with a rather attractive young blonde lady who was very pleasant when I went for a haircut once. That, in addition to a lack of horrifying bigotry, has got to be worth a few extra quid, right?