Niknaks

The first Thursday of the month means FREE HAIR DAY at Poxy’s salon. Employees are allowed to bring family in the late afternoon to have their hair done and I do believe out of all of them Poxy has the most. There’s me (not really a relative) her cousin (who’s name I can never remember) and Kitty and Honey who’ve adopted Pox since she moved down here a couple of months ago. Today it’s just me and the cousin who arrive and qeue up excitedly for our turn.  What in the world could make me happier.



Now, they say it's free hair day but really it's free blonde day.  Everywhere you look there are family members getting the crap bleached out of their skulls and looking really pleased about it.  Yup, you guessed it. Me and the cousin are totally keen and so when Poxy says “Sit down,” we hit the chairs as she clearly wants to get this over with asap.

The first time I got my hair bleached it was really quite pleasant. Nothing major, she put stuff on my hair, I sat around, read a mag a yazoom! Hair as white as the lilies of the field. The second time was not quite as calm.


Poxy chucked the white stuff on and then got involved with her cousin’s highlights whilst I disappeared into a mag. After about half an hour she tapped me on the shoulder. She was frowning and looking at my head. “It’s dried you know, which means it’s probably going to go yellow.”  She said this in an accusational tone, like I had some mysterious hand in it, like my scalp is too warm or something. “You need more bleach doll,” reaching for the pot of Omo paste and layering more goo onto my head.


It took about 30 seconds for me to start bouncing around the salon like a delusional puppy. Oh. The. Pain. It felt like a thousand warring ants have invaded the country of my head. “Don’t scratch!” she screamed everytime I reached up. “It’s going to blister if you do that!”


Oh misery.  Yellow hair and no scalp.  The only thing that could possibly cheer me up was looking at the girl a couple of rows down whose hair had just come out a lovely shade of niknaks. 

“Is it very yellow?” she asked anxiously, her eyes darting around the room. “No dahling no, nothing we can’t fix,” one of the hairdesses chirped from the side and I thought to myself: Never, ever have your hair done by that one.  There are few things as evil as a hairdresser who lies.


Maestro Poxy toned my hair (and scalp) and wha-la! I was once again a natural blonde.

Now if only my scalp will grow back before the next Free Hair Day…