Living in the hair and now.

I go for a haircut. A place I used to get taken to when I was little - a bastion against the insidious culture of regular redecoration, dark and hairy and manly.

Local radio burbles in the corner by the window - last year's DJs presenting the hottest of last year's music, imposing themselves on the room but welcome in lieu of having to make small talk. I'd love to go to one of those American places where we'd chat about the kids and I'd take a phone call on my cell mid-trim, but this isn't a film and I don't even have any children. A haircut is the one bit of prolonged service where both parties have to remain in each other's company. You'd never have to chat with the waitress or the guy on the till in the petrol station. It gets awkward beyond 'how are you', I'm no small-talker.

Conversation was ultimately the least of my worries - I wasn't sure if the guy had early-onset Parkinson's or was still steamed from last night. His breath was retchingly boozey and his hands were shaking. I like that hairdressers like to put on some theatre - a squwoosh of talcum powder, the clacketing of the scissors, the fake accents, that pointless thing with the mirror at the end - but when it gets to the point that customers are praying to make it through...the drama becomes somewhat misplaced.

I was getting anxious. This was taking too long. I don't see so good without my glasses, I'm at the mercy of my captor. He was stopping sporadically, bracing himself against the back of my chair, limbs pumping. At one point he broke off to stare at himself in the mirror some. I would have left him to it, but I was imprisoned by a wall of fabric and half a haircut.

We got through it, our mutual unspoken ordeal - my heart was going like a piston when he whipped out the cutthroat, but I still have both ears and a complete neck. He paused as I handed over my nine-odd pounds of hard-earned. Perhaps he was expecting a tip ('lay off the sauce, son, and knock 20% off that ridiculous asking price'), maybe he was going to say a few words. For all his faults I liked the wee chap, we shared a something.

...I believe this is what's known as Stockholm Syndrome.