I have never liked going to the hairdressers.

I know lots of women love it. And I really want to like it. I really do.

I still have hopes of one day going to a hairdresser that says they will make me look fabulous, and then actually does that.

But I have had too many bad, sad, mad and just disappointing experiences not to approach it with caution.

When I was young I never went to the hairdressers. This was because my mum was a hairdresser.

This was something of a doubled-edged sword.

Whilst I could happily ask her to bleach my hair and cut it into whatever style I wanted and she would generally try to oblige, I was at the mercy of her often outdated and sometimes just plain wrong interpretations.

The upside of course was that if mum got it wrong, I could shout at her and try and make her put it right.

This, I’ve found, you cannot do at a salon.

Every time I go to the hairdressers (which is not often – about once a year usually) I approach it with naive and tremulous hope, tempered by trepidation and bitter experience.

Yesterday was no exception.

I go to a local salon. I have had a few good-ish experiences there over the past few years, though I would not go so far as to say I actually trust them.

Yesterday, I took a photo with me of what I wanted.

That was a bad mistake.

Whilst I am nowhere near naive enough to think that I would look the same, or even halfway as nice, as the model in the photo at the top of this page, I did sort of expect to get a hairdo somewhere in the region of “recognisably similar”.

It was, however, clear to me after my initial discussion with the first of the young ladies pressed upon to transform my barnet, that there was, in fact, no actual hope of that.

What I have ended up with is perfectly serviceable, if a little boring. But it is nothing like what I actually wanted.

And in between the hope and the disappointment there was scalding water and several (I thought) unnecessarily brutal hair washings (with mandatory ear scrubbing) by a girl who appeared to have shaved off her eyebrows and drawn them back on again with a felt tip pen.

I pondered why anyone would have willingly done this, whilst enduring the torture of the “neck vice” basin, the strange squirmy massage chair, and two hours of trying not to look at my own reflection under the least flattering lighting in Christendom.

All to come out looking, in my view, no better than when I went in.

And feeling a good deal poorer.

Oh well, at least hairdresser hell is over for another year. ♥