Wife held to ransom by kidnappers with scissors

I reckon it’s been more than 10 years since I left my locks on the floor of a barber shop. It’s fair to say I provide the same amount of business to hairdressers as Abu Hamza does to glove makers.

As with most things in life, my wife is the yin to my yang. She is a regular visitor to hair salons and her financial contributions more than make up for my enforced boycott.

When I do require a haircut, roughly twice a month, all my needs are catered for by a set of clippers bought for me as a wedding present - the best £30 I never spent.

However, as I hunker on all fours, my wife shearing me like a sheep, Lucy using the little brush to sweep away the clipped hairs from my neck and Ben thumping me on the back just to feel involved, I do hanker for the days when I used to have hair appointments in my diary.

As a consequence of not going the hairdressers for more than 10 years it’s been over a decade since I last discussed my holiday plans.

On Saturday Karen paid a visit to a hair salon to get her hair done for a special occasion, namely the 13th anniversary of our first kiss.

The fact we celebrate this particular anniversary would correctly lead you to assume we’ll use any excuse for party. As well as celebrating four birthdays, a wedding anniversary, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Halloween and Easter in our household we’ve also been known to crack open the bubbly to toast May Bank Holiday.

Personally, October 19th is my favourite anniversary. This year it marked 13 years since I got tiddly on Blue WKD and plucked up the courage to make a move on a certain Miss Karen Todd.

Given my undying love for my wife you’ll not be surprised to learn I was dismayed when she was kidnapped on Saturday.

She left the house just before 11am on Saturday morning with the intention of getting her hair cut and coloured. Around dinner time I got a text saying, ‘Help!’.

Through a series of covert messages I established that she was being held captive in a local hair salon where they were force-feeding her cups of tea as they coloured and styled her hair at a torturously slow pace. It was death by a thousand cuts, if you will.

Just over four and half hours later, at 3.35pm, she was set free by her captors after meeting their ransom demands. When she got home she was a broken woman. I hardly recognised her (though that could have been down to the haircut). When asked how much it cost, Karen’s answer, or lack of it, told me all I needed to know.

“I’m not telling you,” was her reply. There’s only one thing worse than being told the extortionate cost of something, and that’s having to guess.

It isn’t the first time and won’t be the last that my wife has been waylaid indefinitely by a hairdresser then charged a ridiculous amount for the privilege. There’s no denying hairdressers are skilled in the art of hair design, but it’s also apparent they are adept at wasting huge quantities of their subject’s time.

Anyway, by the next day we’d put the unfortunate wasted day in the hairdressers behind us. And on Sunday we celebrated 13 years as an item, though if you factor in all the time spent in the hairdressers it’s probably only been 11 and a half.