matt's 101 in 1001

I hate getting my hair cut. I hate it more than going to the dentist, I hate it more than drivers who fail to indicate when turning and I hate it more than any film starring Ryan Reynolds. I would even go so far as to say I hate it more than Britain's notorious Frosties ad (watch it and you'll know just how serious I am in my disdain for hairdressers).

Honesty, I can't think of a more unpleasurable experience. Everytime I go, it feels like a brutal interrogation. You're planted in a chair, given a black robe which is only a few white stripes and a serial number away from a prison outfit and are promptly surrounded by people brandishing scissors, razors, combs, hacksaws and God knows what other kind of gruesome weaponry.

Worse, surrounded by mirrors and copious amounts of unnatural light, no move goes unwatched. There are just so many opportunities to come across as a freak. Can't remember a joke and crack a smile to yourself, can't pick your nose, can't taunt the small child unhappily getting their mop chopped in the chair beside you; freak, freak, freak!

Personally, I have the minor problem of being extremely ticklish. Whenever they wrap that bit of paper towel around your neck to stop renegade hairs tumbling down your shirt, I squirm and giggle like a schoolgirl, an image endlessly reflected throughout the funhouse of mirrors that is the hairdressing salon.

My most recent trip was particularly torturous. I was first led to a basin where my hair would be washed for me. Ghastly episode! Water and shampoo in my eyes and ears and nose, an experience compounded by the fact my hairdresser failed to specify that my head should sit resting on the rim of the sink and not thrust face first into it.

Next I'm lead to the cutting area (I'm sure they have proper names for these places, right?). No part of this is easy. I can never succinctly convey how I want my hair cut ("shorter" was my most recent response), and if they botch it, that's it. There's no going back; you can't uncut one's hair. What's more is that you can't even tell them how you feel (trust me on this: I once did so as a child, much to the poor hairdresser's horror and subsequent severe depression).

Then, simply because I'm me and this is my life, the power cuts out. So we're suddenly without a functioning hairdryer, razor and funky jazz music. Oh, and light. Yep, she's cutting my hair in the dark. All too conveniently, she tells me she's finished, leaving two thirds of my fringe conspicuously uncut.

Unfortunately, the fact she was unable to blow out the remnant hairs with a hairdryer caused me my worst grief on the tube on the way home. As the air rushed through the carriage, the people behind me were promptly showered with hair. As I seemingly balded at a furious rate, my fellow passengers were subjected to arguably the sickest ticker-tape parade in history, waving off airborne hairs like flies or spitting them out as they interrupted numerous conversations.

Perhaps life would be easier if I really was bald.