hairdressing visit

Today Cecil has mainly been musing on mortality - mainly his own.
Very pale, wan and depressed and it shows in my hair - his depression that is.
At least he used the comb on my hair exclusively, this time, rather than using it on his own hair halfway through the comb-out.

Small, lantern jawed, old women shuffle into the shop; some of them Cecil has picked up on his way in.
He hands out cups of coffee, they collect up damp towels and roller pins. He barks phrases into deaf ears and the women move from shampooing basin to setting chair, to hair dryer, at his nudge, doing small jobs as they go.

Cecil's chatter is endless. The trouble is he ceases work while he recalls an anecdote and I watch the clock move on nearer to the time I should be at home. Edna and Norah nod in the right places, dutifully hand up the pins as required and watch the traffic go by. Other callers pass through to visit the chiropodist and provide yet another distraction and delay.

Cecil is desperate for a ciggy. His feminine "tut" and pout exaggerated by twitchy fingers pulling up his trouser waistband to just below his paunch. Immediately it slides back and his hands stray to his back pocket. He tries to pretend they weren't reaching for the packet.
His mournful voice recites a catalogue of doctor's visits and medical tests, the strain on his marriage because he doesn't feel Sheila is giving him all the sympathy and support he feels entitled to. After all, look how he cared for her through her "dark time" and it's only right he should have his turn.
Then he reveals that none of the test results are through yet - all these ifs and maybes.
He has his grave booked and an appointment with the undertaker on supposition alone!
I have to say something, I really do or I'll still be here at teatime.
"Still working at the home are you Dear?" He's studying his reflection, turning to look at the profile of his gut, not thinking, really, about what he's saying.
"Yes! And I have to be on duty by two."
"Oh you should have said!" He continues back combing Norah's hair with a brush, then choking her with hairspray. There are no refinements like face shields. Norah's medical history is exposed without reference to her. She nods vacantly as he recites the details of her long standing leg ulcer and the vagaries of her digestive system.
Edna, under the dryer, is oblivious as her talks about her without interruption. She sees a stray, wet towel that has missed the linen bin and makes to get up and retrieve it. "Leave it - don't move!" She complies and Norah tuts.

At last! My head is pushed back into the shampoo sink and soft finger tips briefly massage shampoo, in small circles, before tepid water trickles down my neck and into my ears. Cecil continues to speak but now his voice is indistinct and muted because my hearing aids are tucked under the coverall, clasped in sweaty hands. The battery compartment closes, inadvertently, and the aid screams. Cecil prods me. "Yer whistling". Obediently, I fumble under the folds trying to adjust it.
Once he has shaken my head in the towel I can put one aid back in and rejoin the monologue.
"What's the future for me now? High blood pressure, diabetes - it's so depressing." Once again he pauses and the comb waves in the air instead of through my hair. He plugs in implements - clippers, curling tongs and then searches for the blow dry brush, which is a wizened, almost naked, set of spikes that he drags through the hair accompanied by blasts of searing hot air. I am choked by the crystal spray he uses to anchor the style but try not to cough and splutter. He is busy spraying a bigger hole in the ozone layer.

Why do I come here? I constantly ask myself as I look at a decor well past its sell by date. The mobile paraffin heater keeps his feet tepid, the customers need the hair driers to stave off the chill. The corners of the setting area have eons of hair clippings which vapid sweeps of the brush have failed to stir.
Yet customers come from quite a distance, week after week, settling for the same styles for years.

Another regular entered, a tall woman with a short body and disproportionately long legs, a dowager's hump and a beehive worthy or a sixties teenager.
Without a word Cecil left me, washed her hair,put me under the dryer and left me to spectate.
Her hair was spun sugar, an ebony black that accentuated her pallor and heavy, tight, jaw. I felt I had been transported back to an eighteenth century boudoir as he sectioned her hair, rolled each one over a pad and anchored them with squadrons of hairpins that she handed up robotically. As each roll was completed is was sprayed heavily. The final creation was immovable, wisps at the nape of the neck deftly tweaked and tucked under the confection. Her heavily ringed fingers replaced huge button earrings.
Cecil carefully draped a chiffon scarf over the creature - because it did seem to have an independent existence. She, decomposing, sank while her coiffure stayed unchanged like a parody of Dorian Grey.
All her colours were poster blocks, bright, unsubtle, but the frame seemed too fragile to carry the exhibition.
She is the sort of person who beguiles me, holds me fascinated to the point of ogling.

Why are we wasting time?

I listened to Andrew Marr this morning. He is always worth listening to. But he had a bishop of the Church of England, or rather the Anglican communion, talking about the current debates going on in the church.
Now, whatever the rights or wrongs of these debates my problem is a) where is Christ in all this? and b) the world is heading for Armageddon and we are debating sex in various forms! Why? There really are far more important things to worry about and get really het up about.

My concern with a) is that Christ seems to have very little if any say in these matters. They are topics of discussion for those whose first priority is their own self indulgence and gratification. If they really were followers of the Nazarene he would be their first port of call and his reputation would be their first concern.
Instead we see his name and honour dragged through the mud for what? For people who are so consumed with their own ego massaging that the real issues are being overlooked and ignored.
If we are really serious, as Christians, then Christ has to be our one and only concern.
Every thought, word, and action would be referred to him and their consequences for him would motivate the same. My heart grieves for the dishonour to his name and the totally distorted picture presented to none Christians.
Time is running out - that must be obvious to all but those whose minds, souls and consciences have been sealed with a red-hot iron, many of them in prestigious posts in the church - and we must bend our energies and efforts to The Great Commission, not to contemplating our navels and disappearing up our own bottoms!

dream

After a complicated dream that seemed to centre on the Normandy landings (commemoration of D-Day?) with sweeping vistas, close ups and obscure/anachronistic tableaux, in vivid if imprecise detail (oxymoron?), on waking I commenced a conversation with myself - no with the invisible audience if I am honest - about the vicissitudes faced by female fraternizers. The tarred and feathered. My daughter's incandescent fury at their treatment all for trying to protect and feed their children led to the consideration of The Whited Sepulchres who tried to deflect scorn from their own collaboration, who pitched on an easy target.

This led on to "This week I went to Auschwitz..." - imagining my grandson, after a government sponsored school visit, comparing his experience with that of his grandfather's. Jimmy had been part of a Royal Engineers bomb disposal squad sent in to remove booby traps et al before liberation proper could begin. They were warned that things would be bad but who can prepare you for something like that?
"This week I went to Auschwitz."
Anyway, they were led by a young captain. He collapsed and was carried out. Jimmy said he had heard the term "Green at the gills" but that was the one and only time he had ever actually seen anyone that colour. He managed to stay on his feet and finish the job - he was proud of that - but he said that afterwards nothing any human being did to another would surprise him ever again.
"This week I went to Auschwitz."
Will we, at some point, be arranging school trips to Darfur? Just to prove that whatever the horrors we learn little.
Our arrogance in the face of Josef Friezle's revelations - the Pharisaical prayer of "thank god I'm not like that"- and questioning of the Austrian psyche led me to ponder on the nature of abuse/slavery. The two are the same. I smiled wryly at our ability to look without seeing.
"This week I went to Auschwitz."
Abuse, control,slavery, doesn't have to be physical, tangible - it is an attitude of mind, of which we are ALL capable.

It is the attitude of controlling, creating dependence, manipulating anyone to suit ourselves.
It can live in a mansion, wear designer clothes, or next door with Joe Bloggs ; we can find it just as easily in deprivation and abject squalor.
Until attitudes-of-mind change slavery will continue in myriad forms and locations.
"This week I went to Auschwitz".