Excerpt from Bernard Jones Dunces with Wolves

Chapter One

Scissors and suffering

Tuesday 11^th September 2007: Hair-raising incidents

On this day, a sombre anniversary, I am reminded that the world is beset with conflict. Real wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, simmering friction between Israel and the Palestinians. Then there are economic conflicts: inflation, the banking crisis and soaring oil prices. While yours truly struggles at his personal computer to steer the family investment portfolio between these giant fiscal storms, an even greater cloud is spreading its mushroom-shaped darkness. My wife has fallen out with her hairdresser.

The first I know of this hirsute holocaust was when Eunice burst into Lemon Curdistan, my den at the back of the house where as the lonely captain at my PC, I peered into the dark heart of the investing storm.

“Look what she’s done to me, Bernard,” she said, breathlessly. “Just look.”

“What who’s done to you?”

“Just look! It’s an absolute disaster. We’ve got that reception at St Simeon’s church tomorrow night. Sir Giles and Lady Topham will be there. And I simply cannot go like this.”

I blink in disbelief, scanning my wife’s matronly frame for the terminal damage that has apparently been inflicted on her.

“It’s that damn Stacey at Catwalk Cuts. Look, just LOOK,” she said turning around and running her hands through her hair above the back of her neck. In truth I’d expected there to be a pair of pinking shears buried in there up to the handle, perhaps a livid burn, or possibly the repeated slashes of a mishandled razor. But no, it was hair, and apart from being a bit tabby, it looked – well, it just looked like hair. You might as well asked me whether the hairs on a badger’s backside should be straight or curly, black or white, or parted on the left or right. I am a man, and I therefore had literally no clue whatever to what I should say about the hair I could see on the back of my wife’s head. At least she’d got some there. Nevertheless, I knew it was imperative to agree with her before a minute was up and to do so without hesitation, deviation or delay.

“Well, I must say,” I started, trying to give myself time to think. “It does look, rather like a ...”

The trouble was that in my head I could now only think of one image, so lucid, so vivid and so plainly not what she wanted to hear: badger’s bum.

“It does er resemble...” I said. Go on, say it. Badger’s bum, badger’s bum, badger’s bum. The little self-destructive voice in myself clamoured to be heard, to shout out for all the world to hear. Badger’s bum, badger’s bum. Go on, Bernard, have courage. Tell her it looks like a badger’s bum.

“Well, the way they’ve coloured it, it looks a teeny bit like a badger’s bottom, doesn’t it?” I said.

Eunice spun around to face me like a rocket-powered Bolshoi ballerina. “What? It’s not the colour, Bernard! It hasn’t been coloured, has it? I mean look, that’s my normal colour, with the highlights, isn’t it?”

“Is it? Oh, yes. So it is,” I squeaked. Ah, so badger isn’t a problem on the colour front. What was I to say?

“So what exactly is the problem, then?” I asked.

“Bernard. It is perfectly obvious. Stacey has cut it all wrong. I told her exactly what I wanted right at the start. Just look at it!”

“Is it a bit too short then?” Desperation, sheer desperation.

“No, no, no, Bernard. Come here.” She summoned me out to the hall mirror, where she could give me a personalised audio-guided tour of the battlefield. “It’s not the length, it’s the type of cut. I’d told her I wanted it feathered. And as you can clearly see she’s gone and layered it,” she said, plumping and preening the badger’s bum-like tufts in question.

“Ah. Has she. Ah. Well, if you’re not happy, I should complain.”

“I have complained,” Eunice snorted. “And they offered me £10 off. I mean, that’s ridiculous.”

“Why didn’t you take it? I mean that would be a virtually free cut, I imagine.”

“Hardly, Bernard. I used to pay £35 for Mr Paul...”

“Thirty five quid! For a haircut!”

“No Bernard, for a wash, conditioner, design consultation and cut. Anyway Paul, who was principal stylist, left in 2006. Since then I’ve had Lorraine, who is a senior stylist...”

“And how much does she charge?”

“Well, all the senior stylists went up in July to £38. But then they brought in Stacey as styling director, and I was recommended to see her because she was so highly thought of, having worked under Sebastian Montrachet in Paris.”

Never heard of him. “Come on then, what’s the damage?”

“Well. It’s £60. So ten pounds off was hardly the point.”

My jaw hung open. After decades of practice keeping my mouth shut I thought I’d already reconciled myself to the staggering expense in shoes, clothes, cosmetics and personal care products of keeping my wife slightly less unsightly in late middle age than she would otherwise be. But no. My head reeled at this largesse, ladled out fortnightly to the scissor-wielding mafia of the home counties.

“Good God, woman, that’s over £1,500 a year! That’s more than our council tax! How on earth do they justify it?”  

“Well, last time they went up they said it was because of the increase in minimum wage.”

“Ridiculous! The minimum wage is less than six quid an hour. Do they take ten hours to do your hair? Or are there teams of a dozen, lovingly caressing each superannuated follicle in turn.”

“Bernard, I’m the one who’s cross, not you...”

“And all this stuff and nonsense about principal stylists and what not. Presumably, it’s only a matter of time before they bring in a chief executive stylist who earns £1.2m a year, has a company helicopter, share options and a gratis flat in the Barbican.”

“Oh for goodness, sake, now you’re exaggerating.”

“Look, I really think you should economise. I get my hair cut for £6.50, once a month.”

“Don’t try that one on me, Bernard. You only go to that tawdry old barber here because he’s got copies of Men Only and Club International lurking among the car and fishing magazines. The place is dirty, the floor is never swept, and it’s full of labourers and van drivers. Besides,” she said, peering at my thinning pate, “on a cost per hair basis £6.50 works out a great deal more expensive that Catwalk Cuts.”

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