A WOMAN who has suffered a life-changing injury is consoled that her upcoming visit to the hairdresser will have fewer awkward silences.
Helen Archer lost a pint-and-a-half of blood and three fingers in an accident with an industrial kitchen slicer, but has found a silver lining in the gripping narrative it will make while she has her roots done.
She said: “You can’t imagine how painful it is. I’m in there for four hours sometimes, and Sophie has absolutely no conversation. The silences are agonising.
“At my last appointment, I tried a tale about how my cousin’s girlfriend got scammed, but I was too too removed to be on top of the details and the story unravelled before she’d even done the second rinse. But this solves everything. The timing couldn’t be better!
“I’ll be able to get through the hairwashing, the first trim and the foils with a graphic account of the accident itself, the rush to casualty, and the scars on the two fingers they did manage to reattach should take me right to the finish.
“And all it took was mildly traumatic bloodletting, a two day hospital stay and the loss of some mobility and nerve function. I should take up an extreme sport so this can happen more often.”
Hairdresser Sophie Rodriguez said: “You hear all sorts in this job. A woman told me she’d murdered her first husband, or something? I don’t know, I don’t really listen.”
