Episode 2 - Pathetic Fallacy

A Very English Kind Of Butchery

Everyone I know has at least one horror story involving a scissor-happy hairdresser and an ill-considered makeover. Before now, I would listen to these tales with mock sympathy until proclaiming, rather bombastically, that there was not a salon in Christendom that could despoil my locks.  As with every tragedy that one hears about, we never, for one nano-second, believe that they will befall us.  We think that we are somehow exempt; that our brightly conditioned hair will escape the wrath of a blind Edward Scissorhands.  

Like every pig-headed dullard, I was proven to be spectacularly wrong.  It mattered not that my stylist was a thoroughly likable chap with a moist Italian charm and an enviable selection of teas and biscuits.  What mattered was that we spoke different languages. 

When I tried to explain, with tedious meticulousness, the haircut of my dreams, my new chum looked on with innocent incomprehension.  I doubt most native English speakers would have understood much of my florid gibberish but, for my unfortunate coiffer, it must have been like hearing Anglo-Saxon for the very first time.

My suspicions of a communication breakdown were first aroused when my hair was shaved with an alacrity that would have alarmed a well-seasoned sheep.  At that moment, I realised that a butchering was very likely.  But when my well-intentioned ‘Delilah’ began muttering about Brad Pitt in ‘Inglourious Basterds’ [sic], I knew that my doom was sealed.  Who, apart from the most misguided wretch, would make a conscious decision to look like a Nazi?

So, how do you imagine I reacted when this aggressive topiary was underway?  Well, I did what any self-respecting Englishman would have done when faced with such circumstances: I grinned politely throughout the thirty minute ordeal, tipped him generously, and left cursing my own pathetic uselessness. 

When will we English learn that keeping silent is an act of supreme stupidity?

Like Samson, let’s just hope I can regain enough strength for Kites’ show on Saturday at Scala.