Awkward

Last week i returned to a hairdresser that I used to go to, before I found one that cuts my hair much closer to  the painfully exact and obsessive specifications I have set in my head for the top of my head. As my current hairdresser was on holiday, and I needed a haircut badly, this was my only easy option. Returning to an old hairdresser (they work in the same salon) to me feels like a prodigal animal trudging slowly back towards whomever it betrayed and deserted for another. I was pretty sure I was either going to get a revenge shite cut or something equally nefarious for my crime. Or that's all just bored dramatising on my part. Regardless, the haircut hour came and I exchanged a pleasant and crucial hello. You see, this old hairdresser in question I had to leave because a) he was a rather attractive man, and the way hairdressers need to occupy an uncomfortable comfort space around your face and head made things anatomically and biologically difficult and b) the new girl I go to does it better and how I like it. So at the time it was all a seamless and necessary transition to go from old to new, and now new to old was proving weird already. Normally I give hairdressers all my chat and indulge in theirs, and I certainly did with this one. I always thought it a customary thing to do; you and your hairdresser had a professional yet personal and specific relationship, good haircuts justly earn loyalty, and your connection with them is enhanced with friendly, inane banter. Well this haircut was not to be an overall pleasant one. The first few minutes involved some chatter of the general work, play, what festivals? nature, then everything seemed to veer towards a very natural, preferred silence. Preferred in the sense that when the talking stopped, it actually seemed to improve the atmosphere. He just got on with the snipping and when it ended, I dutifully OK'ed the front and back of my head (he cut my fringe too short and gelled it to make me look like Simon from the Inbetweeners but I expected worse in the name of revenge) and made off into the day, quickly heading for the nearest shop window to properly inspect the damage myself. I guess this hairdresser thing is probably all just hoo-hah. Maybe there's no secret code of loyalty or scorned aftertastes of customers past.

More and more often I recognise people in work that I have had past histories with, or a bare connection in the distant past with. Frustratingly any actual conversation with them beyond the bounds of general introductory chatter is a non-starter, and the general nitter-natter itself is tense enough. As tasking as work conversations can be, this added level of tense familiarity only seems to make things worse. Many of these familiaries I have avoided altogether. And now it's too late to initiate any conversation, as it'll just seem forced.

Oh well.