Low life | 6 September 2018

I’d missed the train, and the next was due in 45 minutes, so I popped into the nearby salon for a haircut, two months since the last one. Half Price Monday for Students, it said on a board outside. Inside, three women attended to three female heads in a spacious salon with the doors and windows flung open to the warm air and the view of the long-stay car park. I was directed to a chair, and presently a woman came bounding through a door, exuberantly, like a chat-show host bounding down the studio steps to wild applause. She was slim and tanned with strong-looking legs, aged about 50. ‘And how are you today?’ she yelled, as if I were deaf as well as old. Gawd help me, I thought. Here, clearly, was the loudest, chattiest and most socially confident woman on the firm. And I guessed that I was about to be expertly questioned and that my foolish inconsistencies were about to be exposed to everyone within earshot, including the ticket collector over at the station.