A day under the dryer...

One day when I was having my little grey devils done at Curl up and Dye (only kidding, just my local corner salon, but ever since I saw that name painted above a little village hair shop in the West of Ireland some time back I've been dying for a chance to use it) I was seated next to a Dynamic Young(ish) Woman. She was dressed expensively in black and had an aura of command. Whilst my once- every-six-weeks salon treat warrants a lady with a pair of scissors, a box of store bought Clairol No 75 and a paintbrush, this DYW had no less than three stylists dancing attendance on her. It is, by the way, one of my recurring nightmares that I should get stranded on a desert island sans said magic muthi, so I keep a year's supply just in case. And now you also know that ol' Suzy Q might just be showing signs of grey too. True confessions of an aging Suzy Q.  This madness has to stop.

But back to the salon. Ms All in Black, was, I was informed by good authority (Suzy Q's spies at work again) a daughter of a great publishing dynasty. Well, with all that money and privilege, one would have hoped that she might have learnt a few lessons in decent decorum, even if she clearly hadn't made it to a Swiss finishing school. Whilst her three stylists worked and clucked and fussed and shaped her dyed black mane, she clicked away at her black macbook (natch) and bitched down her black iphone, leaving her attendants in abeyance as they could not continue cutting with all the angry bobbing of said head without slicing off her ear. Oh, Van Gogh, where are you when we need you? We have pretty clear rules about cellphone etiquette. Always on Silent in restaurants, meetings, church, and never taking calls even at the checkout, treating those harworking ladies as if they didn't exist as human beings. So this was some experience, being in such close vicinity to such a vociferous female. Perhaps being born so wealthy and self important had led her to believe she really was the Centre of the Universe. I do however know people who could knock her family fortune into a cocked hat who remain ever humble.

"What do you mean you don't know?" she barked at some poor hapless employee, trying to feed his/her family.
"Do you hear me, loud and clear? Get where I'm coming from?"


The stylists took another step back, their next appointment could wait, for this was after all, a VIP.


"Get me the numbers before 5pm or you're done. Got it!? WHAAT? I'm not interested in excuses. This is your problem not mine. Just handle it!!"


Click. Back to her very important emails on the black mac.


Or perhaps she was adding herself as her only facebook friend or googling herself to get her numbers up.


Stylists resume your roles.

I hastily left with my two (much younger then) daughters in tow, lest they be infected by this self aggrandized female, thinking how relieved they must be to live with sweet, gentle me, all be I a bit lumpy, dumpy and frumpy these days, rather than with the ubercool Cruella De Ville. 


"Did you notice that lady in black in there?" I baited them.
"Oh yes!" came the reply. "She's our role model." 

Sigh, sigh, sigh (or should I cry?)


Suzy Q

Ps. You may be happy to hear that as they approach maturity, the little Misses Suzy Q have turned out nothing like The Barking Woman In Black, for which I give abundant thanks to all the the powers that be.