Conversation in the hairdressers

I'm in the hairdressers getting a cut which turns me into Anna Wintour - a sad mistake as it's obvious I won't be getting up at five every morning to get it tweaked - but I don't mind; I never mind too much, it must be the instinct to please. The stylist is a lively, gregarious girl with a lovely, unplaceable accent. The shop is empty save for the boss in the corner listening to something on earphones. Usually I'm useless at hairdressing conversation, but needs must.

Has it been a quiet day? I ask.

Well... I thinks it's normal, she says. Usually we get busy after five. You know, people coming in after work. We stay open late... Anyway, it's raining.

Rain is the bottom line. I've not known a street more prone to rain than West End Lane. It almost needs a poem written about it. Regularly I get caught out in the sort of showers that only exist otherwise for climactic scenes in Richard Curtis rom-coms.

The hair cut gets shorter and shorter. We've agreed that we'll start long and work upwards - the usual hairdressing technique, I imagine, unless you're in some upside-down universe of hair extensions. I have an underlying feeling of doubt but I don't want to be discouraging so I smile and say, keep cutting.

I remember once, she says, when I wasn't able to wash my hair for two months and it was really long and dirty. There wasn't any water. So I cut it all off. (She demonstrates with imaginary swipes of the scissors). We were living in the mountains then, you know, because of the war.

She keeps cutting. Her face is bright; if you had only the picture to go by you'd imagine she was talking about a brilliant holiday.

I'm Kosovan, she tells me in the mirror. I was twelve in the war; we stayed in the mountains for two or three months. My sister had to go down to the village to bake the bread for everybody... If the soldiers had found her, they would have made a massacre. My friend came from a village where half of the people were massacred. Sometimes I look for it on the internet: I want to know more about it, even though it is bad to keep revisiting it.

And the haircut you gave yourself? I ask. Was that what first made you want to do this job?

She laughs, reading my thoughts (what kind of a refugee haircut will I end up with?!) and No no, she says, I wanted to do this a long time before that.