The point of it all

"You have three children?"

"Yes, that's right."

Marion, the travelling hairdresser, is having her seasonal allergic reaction to holly, ivy, crackers with miniature handbells in them (Lakeland do them, if you really want to know) and piped carols, and is taking a break from hair so she can get her whole head sorted out instead, perhaps teasing the brain stem nodes into a pleasingly assymetrical arrangement with a fringe and fixing it with a blast of hairspray.

I've resorted, instead, to the local barber's which is run by two brothers and, despite an astonishingly large pole outside (bastard offspring of one of those outsize pepper pots beloved by Italian resaurants and a range of 'Arrogant' brand hair gel (extra big tubes only) promises unisex haircuts together, though not advertised, with an interesting line in scissor-side chat.

"Your brother told me he has a daughter in Instanbul," I say, to break a silence that has now lasted several minutes.

There's a pause as the barber meets my gaze in the mirror. His expression is completely blank.

"If he told you, it must be true."

"You don't sound convinced," I say.

There's another long pause, then:

"I don't see the point of this conversation."

Point? Since when did the edict go out that conversations with your hairdresser had to have a point? On the contrary, I thought that they were an exercise in comfortable non-sequitors which would at some point include holiday destinations, rain or the lack of it, the political situation - though painted with the broadest of brush strokes to avoid offending anyone, and a celebrity or two.

The haircut is finished in silence.

The next day I bring Leo and Deborah; Beth, who has spent several hours washing, straightening and then pouting at her hair in a mirror, refuses to come.

"On holiday?" the barber asks them. They nod.

"Lucky, lucky, you," he says. "I wish I was a child again."

"Why?" I'm about to ask him, always fascinated by this sort of comment and keen to know if people really mean it and would, if given the opportunity, trade places in order to labour through their lives all over again.

But, remembering the previous day's exchange, I bite the words back.

"I hope I didn't offend you yesterday," I say later, after I've paid.

"No. I am.....a big softy," he says, looking straight at me, deadpan, eyes as dead as any I've ever seen.

If he's a big softy, I am the Queen of Rumania.