Going local - at the hairdresser

From our Cotswolds columnist, Catherine Moore, who said goodbye to inner-city London and upped sticks for Gloucestershire, for the sake of family life and more space...

'Our newest London exile - who's actually been in Gloucestershire for a year now - showed up in the local pub on Friday with a suspicious new and fabulous haircut. On further questioning it transpired that our urban refugee had sneaked back to Shoreditch for a quick primp at über-cool Tommy Guns.

 

'Of course I made fun of her for fearing our local stylists, but it took me around three years before I dared set foot across the threshold of a Gloucestershire hairdressers. Periodically, when things really were getting out of hand, I would jump on the train to London to have my hair done at Daniel Field in Soho or Trevor Sorbie in Covent Garden. I came back feeling great, but organising and financing these excessive expeditions did come to feel more and more absurd as time went on.

 

'I wasn't sure what I was so scared of. I wasn't exactly surrounded by people with bubble perms in Gloucestershire (though there was an uncomfortable smattering). It was more a psychological thing. Stepping over the threshold of Vogue in Stroud really would mark the transition from one life to another and something was holding me back.

 

'It was all a bit stupid really. When I actually did live in the trendy enclaves of Camden Town or Brixton I usually looked like I was about to go on a country hike. Now I was actually in hiking country I grew nostalgic for the urban ‘vibe' and having my London haircuts was my way of holding on to some mysterious notion of myself as ‘woman about town' rather than ‘woman about cow field looking for dog who's run off'.

 

'I dipped my toe in the water at Toni and Guy in Cheltenham as an intermediate step. It was not a success. I stepped out of there on the edge of tears as I caught sight of myself in shop windows looking like a freak in a one size fits all Toni and Guy wig-style ‘do'. I should have known better. One of my neighbours had been there - once - and her husband told her she looked like Dot Cotton after the experience.

 

I wasn't exactly surrounded by people with bubble perms in Gloucestershire (though there was an uncomfortable smattering). It was more a psychological thing'I ran back to the comforting arms of Daniel Field. But this addiction had to stop. I would have to go cold turkey. I would go local.

 

'Once I ended up looking the way my grandma looked in the 70s. Another time my daughter cried because I looked like somebody else's mummy.

 

'I finally approached a complete stranger who had what I thought was a great haircut and asked her who had wielded the scissors. She very kindly told me both the name of the salon and the stylist. Unfortunately, by the time I got around to booking my appointment I'd completely forgotten which stylist had been recommended and could only remember that she had a biblical name. I was given a choice of (names changed to save my embarrassment next time I go in there) Rebecca and Esther. After tossing a coin I booked in with Rebecca, full of hope.

 

'But wasn't it just absolutely typical that I'd plumped for the wrong Bible story. It became apparent about three quarters of the way through the appointment. As the walls of the salon began to close in on me and something approaching panic began to rise, my memory suddenly kicked in. It should have been Esther - there she was, over there, chatting in a relaxed way to a woman who was going to be walking out of that salon looking one hell of a lot better than me.

 

'I was going to say I hit the streets in full poodle mode, but I was more of a Labradoodle, a weird hybrid creature with lank, greasy-looking curls. All I needed was a wet black nose and I'd have been in the judging ring at Crufts.

 

'But I had the bit between my teeth and was determined to go back and get the right woman next time. I was pathetically sheepish on my first appointment when I slunk past Rebecca on the way to Esther's chair. ‘Oh, you were fully booked,' I lied as I sat down to the first haircut I was happy with since deciding to go local.

 

'But I think my Shoreditch friend has a way to go yet before she'll let anyone within a hundred miles get within a hundred miles of her.

 

'If she's anything like my neighbour I won't plan on it ever happening.  This wonderful older woman has been living here for years after spending most of her working life in London and still makes the most convoluted trip to see her old dentist down there. After all, these yokel tooth-pullers, who knows what damage they might do.'

 

Click here to read more from our Cotswolds columnist