[EDIT: I am resurrecting this blog. While reacquainting myself with WordPress, I came across this draft post from April 2014. Hopefully you find it as amusing as I still do.]
Ah ha! Sunday, 12:30. After exchanging a few words with our veggie vendor at the market about my rather diminshed tri training regimen (partly explaining why I was even at the market in the first place) we were finally ready to head back home, lugging a bulging shopping trolley.
As we pulled the trolley against the thick Sunday, just-before-lunch crowds, we were blocked by an older man and a smiling young blond woman with bright red lipstick. He was clutching a clipboard holding a sheaf of glossy B&W contact sheets, and several small cards.
“I run a school of hairdressing!” he explained, as he blocked the narrow passage between a poultry butcher and a vegetable stand.
“And you, Madame, need a haircut. Sure, it’s fine to show off your ears, but look at this (he gestures towards the spiky crown where i have a cowlick, slightly exaggerated by my hairdresser to avoid looking like a dark-haired Princess Di), c’est du n’importe quoi !”
Translation: your hair’s a mess!
Then turning to HerrKaa, “Ça c’est marrant,” as he swept over his bedhead-induced cowlick, “but it’s just too short on the sides. It should be at least a centimetre longer.” (Marrant = funny or amusing).
Incredibly, instead of responding with his best grumpy-German look, HerrKaa asked where the salons where and how much they charged.
The reply was also marrant: “Yes, you see I was trained by Vidal Sassoon himself, my maitre, and now I run my own school. We’re always packed, but on Sundays I still come out to the markets and give people my card. I look for people like you, people who fait un effort…”
I had to laugh. “Make an effort” smacked of being damned with faint praise. “Ah, so we’re trying, but not quite succeeding, eh?” Our vegetable vendor looked at me sympathetically.
“Tout à fait. You should come to my salon. It has….blah blah blah. And our hairdressers speak English! (NB: this conversation was held entirely in French) Your hair, well, it’s ok, but it could be so much better! “
I explained somewhat apologetically that this is my hair 6 weeks after its last cut and that I’m due to get another next weekend.
“Yes, but we look at this, there’s no shape, there’s blah blah blah…” as he rifled through my Sunday got-out-of-bed, totally-unstyled, must-get-groceries-done coiffure. “Really, showing your ears is OK, and we can bring out your masculine side too, but really, this cut is way too short for you.”
(Oh, not this again. I left my last French hairdresser oops I mean artiste de coiffure because she too refused to cut my hair shorter than shoulder length. “But it doesn’t go with your morphology. It shows off far too much of your shoulders!”)
Anyhow. If this is his normal sales pitch, no wonder he has to cruise for customers at the Sunday morning markets.
For the record, here’s what my hair (and shoulders) looks like au naturel, as well as with a bit of grooming: