When my hairdresser told me she was having a baby, I was delighted. I had worried for years about what would happen to my hair when Nadia retired, and knowing that she had created an heir to whom she could pass on the intricate secrets of my coiffuring needs was very reassuring. Oh, and I was very happy for her on a personal level, too. Obviously.
But then disaster. Someone told me Nadia might not be coming back to the John Frieda salon in Aldford Street after her maternity leave because it wasn’t compatible with parenting. I was in pieces. The selfishness of the woman!
Esther, whose hair she also cuts (but who was taking it better) said maybe Nadia could cut my hair at home. But then what about the excellent tea and sandwiches they serve at John Frieda? The hair wash and head massage? The stroll down Mount Street afterwards to tip my hat at Don the doorman outside Scott’s and maybe stop in for half a dozen natives and a glass of Montrachet? What did she think she was doing to my life?
“Stella Creasy wouldn’t do this!” I roared at Esther. “She’d work with the baby in her other hand! Or strapped to her leg or something!”
“And get hair all over it? I don’t think so.”
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But then a wonder: Having had the baby a few months ago, Nadia has come back! Just one day a week, but enough to look after my needs. Yesterday I popped in for my pre-Christmas trim and it was like coming home. Nadia sorted out the wreckage left by my fill-in haircuts from the Turks in Kentish Town (it looked like an Italian waiter’s toupee), I had a lovely cappuccino and biscotti, and all is once again well on
top of my head and inside it.
And the baby? Well, since you ask, she was at home with her dad and from next year will be in a daycare place Nadia likes. It’s wonderful how mothers always find a way. Either to keep parliament working, or to do the really important stuff, like keeping me beautiful.
Name game
I was surprised to hear a BBC newsreader employing the hysterical language of apocalyptic science fiction on the morning news yesterday. “UN member states are meeting in Geneva this week,” he intoned gravely, “to discuss whether a treaty is needed to govern the use of lethal autonomous weapons, sometimes called ‘killer robots’.”
“Wait, what? Killer robots?” said Sam, eight, who was sitting in the car next to me. “Who is using killer robots?”
“Nobody,” I said. Truthfully, as far as I know.
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“But it said on the news!”
And he’s right, it did. But why? To call a “lethal autonomous weapon” a “killer robot” tells you that you are in the realm of satire, even comedy, and absolutely demonstrates where the person saying it stands on the issue of artificial intelligence in the military.
Or is it now considered correct at the Beeb to include random occasional name-calling when reporting on world events? In which case, I look forward to hearing this evening on Radio 4 that: “The prime minister, sometimes called ‘a fat, useless chancer with trick underpants’, has outlined new rules to protect against the spread of Covid, sometimes called ‘a complete hoax’, with a vaccine sometimes called ‘a conspiracy to hand over control of our brains to Bill Gates’, sometimes called ‘an evil, despotic, super nerd . . . ’”
Virgin territory
A decline in sexual activity during lockdown has led to record numbers of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 remaining virgins, say researchers at Glasgow University, with most of them “blaming it on the pandemic”. It’s all very different from when I was a lad. Back then, the response to why you were still a virgin in your late teens was, “I’M NOT! I had sex with at least two girls last summer. No, you wouldn’t know them. They live way up north in Scotland or somewhere. No, actually they live in Portugal. Or, like, the Philippines. I’ve got this photo, though. I know it looks like it was cut out of a magazine but . . .”
