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A woman with long wavy hair sits in a barber chair, while a male barber holds a white cape over her in a brick-walled salon.

A woman with long wavy hair sits in a barber chair, while a male barber holds a white cape over her in a brick-walled salon.

‘Yes, you, love,’ the bespectacled plump chap sighed, signalling I was unable to choose who to consult in this establishment. I stood up and shuffled forward. Rudely, he tapped his foot as if bored waiting, so I quickened my pace and slipped into his huge leather and chrome chair. My short dress rode up on my thighs as I sat, the worn leather cold against my skin. Gathering my hair loosely over one shoulder, I tossed it behind me, allowing it to flow down the back of the chair. I decided on one of the opening gambits for my consultation that I had been silently practising while waiting. Opening my mouth to express my wishes, my words stalled when a large white cloth billowed in front of me. The barber attempted to fasten the cape at my neck, but my long hair thwarted his endeavours. While he grumbled behind me, I lifted my hair away from my neck, and he finally secured the cape, far too tightly for my liking. Then I allowed my hair to fall behind the chair once more. The old barber grunted. ‘So, what’s it to be, love?’ ‘Take it all off,’ I said, my voice a little shaky, a little breathless. As part of the consultation, I waited for his questions to clarify the finished style I was envisaging. Whether I wanted it to remain longer than my shoulders or trimmed to a bob or, daringly, cut into a sort of pixie style. I knew Mrs Jacobs back home would have tut-tutted at my statement and tried to talk me out of it. But this was the city. Here, it seemed, anything went. ‘Sure,’ he Mehr sehen