Low life | 30 April 2015

Two stylists work at this deeply rural French ladies’ hairdresser. Christelle is a gorgeous 17-year-old point-of-lay pullet, so lithe and well made I want to weep. Sylvette, the owner, though knocking on a bit, is a man-eater on the rampage. I had my old barnet thatched here for the first time about two months ago. Christelle scissored and shaved my hair with a cut-throat razor for the best part of an hour and I came out of there mentally deranged but with the best haircut I’d ever had. Later that day I found in my jacket pocket a torn-off piece of card with Sylvette’s name and phone number written on it in black biro. She must have slipped it in while I was under the cape. I was surprised because although she’d washed my hair, all we had said to each other was ‘bonjour’ and ‘bye bye’. They don’t beat about the bush, the French. Or perhaps the bit of card represented a painfully coy, old-fashioned approach. Fearful that going to bed with this woman would be a bit like stepping into the ring with Kendo Nagasaki, and worried that by doing so I could be in all sorts of trouble on several other counts, I let the offer pass. Two months later, I’m like an overgrown laurel and back at the salon for another intricate razoring by Christelle. I’m ten minutes early and waiting in the hair-washing chair while Sylvette finishes painting an elderly woman’s tightly plaited head. Sylvette will shampoo my hair then shove me across the room into Christelle’s cutting chair. Today Sylvette is wearing a black jumper with armoured shoulder protectors, a choke chain suitable for a bull mastiff and a black microskirt perforated with metal studs. And she’s clumping about in these bondage boots with triple ankle chains and sturdy heel brackets, which, given the right circumstances, and a length of chain and padlock, would secure her ankles to the bedposts and keep them there no matter what.