Visiting one's hairstylist today is a significant part of a girl's life.
When I was a young TV star I spent far too many hours sitting with Roy and David Brassington in their Salon in Treger House.
To my mind 'Life is too short to waste it under a hairdryer!!'
Mum used to go to have her hair washed and styled every single week come rain or shine. Salon Mona Lisa it was for half a century!! She had that beautiful auburn hair that hardly went grey at all. You were allowed to smoke in salons in those days and darling Mom would settle comfortably under the dryer, puffing away, her hair a mass of red plastic curlers under a net. She would catch up with the glossy magazines and make shopping notes on the back of her Peter Stuyvesant cigarette box...Rows and rows of similarly attired ladies, all under hoods, enjoying their weekly treat!!
Nowadays its so much easier, just wash ones tresses in the shower daily, a cut and blow-wave every six months, highlights and roots touched up at the same time...Not exactly in and out in a flash but thank goodness we can now avoid that hideous hood hairdryer!!
I can even remember as far back as metal hair curlers before the plastic era took over, my goodness they could burn!! Our teenage Sundays were spent sitting in the sun to dry our hair, then for my sixteenth I got a portable hood hairdryer, and so our house on Sundays became very popular.
Possibly the worst part of our salons in days gone by, were the tinting torture instruments. No one is ever satisfied with the colour of her hair, and so much money is spent on highlights, lowlights, root cover ups and the like. Nowadays the salons reply on good old sheets of tin foil, but we oldies were forced to use the 'ye old rubber bathing cap' torture method.
A tight rubber cap was pulling painfully over one's head with much grunting and groaning. Said cap had been punched with an inordinate amount of small holes, through which, tiny clumps of hair would be pulled, excruciatingly, with the used of a steel crochet hook!!
Yes, there were tears, there were swearwords, especially for girls with long tresses, it was a painfully arduous, ghastly experience for the stylist and the client!!
I look forward to seeing what new innovations the scientists have for us in future salons!! Virtual appointments somehow
But it still rather delicious to catch up with the local gossip at the stylist. Not of course with the Maestro Coiffeur who is sworn to secrecy, but with the improvers and the other clientele who have to talk over the sound of the hair dryer.