The mid-mouse approach

Marion the hairdresser is back, accompanied by Janet, the colourist. At least it's taking my mind off the piano.

Marion doesn't do colouring. "If I so much as look at those chemicals, I get this allergic reaction," she explains, pulling up her trouser leg for a more graphic demonstration, at which point seasoned customers tend to shut their eyes, though nodding supportively.

So Janet's the one for colour me beautiful hair. Not that she's that good an advertisement for her products. Her own locks are distinctly patchy. "Flyaway," she says, stroking the thinning pageboy cut. And repeat business tends to be confined to a handful of clients who are either too apathetic to care or, like us, haven't got the heart to say 'no' - at least, not every time.

Unfortunately, Janet has a cautious approach. If she could, she'd colour everything mid-mouse and given a free hand, I suspect she wouldn't confine it to hair. If there's such a thing as a mid-mouse approach to life, she has it.

Most people somehow resist the minor slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Not Janet. Every new pinprick of a setback brings her to her knees, emotionally speaking, to the point where, were she ever invited to play Maria in 'Sound of Music', there'd be no option but to change the Mother Superior's rousing song to, 'Climb every molehill' - and even then you can guarantee that Janet would be demanding back-up oxygen after the first few inches.

Every day dawns on a landscape of sadness. Some might suggest it's nothing a good slap wouldn't sort out, but Marion, kind-hearted to a fault, just isn't the sort of person capable of administering one.

Today, though, even she is getting fed up.

"Yesterday she arrived with her eyes welling," she mutters, combing my hair with slightly more enthusiasm than is comfortable, while Janet is sorting out the tools of her trade - tissues, mid-mouse colouring and more tissues.

"She has to have the same lunch every day - a triple cheese sandwich from the petrol station round the corner. Yesterday they'd run out. 'I particularly like my triples. I went in three times and each time they weren't there,' she said.

"Then I suggested trying Marks and Spencers. She got one, then virtually cried because it didn't taste the same.

"So to cheer up her up, I gave her this candle. It's one of those great big church ones with pink and purple flowers. It's lovely but not really my style.

"Anyway, she just looked at it, her eyes welled up again and she said, 'But I haven't got any matches,' in this tone of genuine misery. So I went round the corner and bought her some. Honestly."

"I thought you made her go on that life course you were telling us about," I say.

"I did," says Marion, grimly.

"What happened?"

"She refused to get up on stage and share her traumas with the audience," says Marion, in a voice of outrage. "Then she told the organisers she thought it was making her feel worse and demanded a refund."

Janet reappears. I look at her with a new respect. Mid-mouse on the exterior, core of steel on the inside.

"So, what are we doing today?" she asks.

"Pink?" I say. "Bright red? Purple?"

She stares at my hair for a moment. "I think," she says, finally,"that what would suit you is a nice, mid-tone."