The cutting edge

Francis's dad calls, and we have one of those peculiarly British conversations which is conducted entirely in half sentences. "And how's Francis getting on with his.....?" "Oh, fine, though there's nothing really......." "No, well, of course, but he wouldn't want to take the first......" "Well, yes - not that it wouldn't be nice to.....". We both agree that in the circumstances it's all, quite......isn't it? and feel all the better for having exchanged these morale-boosting little intimacies.

Next I 'phone Marion, who is notable for the ability to make me almost as guilty as my own children, because she appears to have, and want, so little, that every expectation I have seems, in contrast, grossly vulgar and grasping.

Marion is our travelling hairdresser. She in thrall to spiritual forces ("You know she believes in fairies," warned the mother who told me about her) but if they exist, they certainly aren't doing her any favours. She's followed by packs of traffic wardens, scouring arcane by-laws so that wherever she parks, she always gets a ticket. There's no shower so light that it can't grease the pavements just sufficiently to ensure that she slips and breaks a couple of bones as she falls; she's so sensitive to every hair care chemical she uses that she has to glove up like a surgeon before she can even open the boot of her car to get out her bags of booty. But it makes no difference. Whatever she does, eczema plays up and down her limbs like a virtuoso pianist.

She's also severely allergic to animals and is thus effortlessly able to attract not just our pets but everyone else's as well, to the extent that were I to find every formerly untameable feral cat, fox and sheep-killing panther of Bodmin Moor circling round our front door on the off-chance of brushing against her and triggering a severe reaction, I would be only slightly surprised.

Afflicted, like Francis' father, with the same admirable reserve, she will never tout for business but waits for us to call her - which, of course we do, but always rather later than we'd meant to. My guilt has grown over the years because while I have recommended her to other families, none tends to stay with her for long, ditching her tales of fairy folk and skin treatments in favour of the reassuring platitudes of the traditional salon.

Would I like to do the same? Well, given the reputation of a couple of the hairdressers round here - one, an honours graduate of the Sweeny Todd School of Barbering, is famed for his combined hair 'n' ear reshaping techniques and co-ordinated lawsuits - perhaps not. And I've know Marion for so long that it would be the height of betrayal. I just have to remember not to slip a long-haired hamster in with the tip.