The Day it All Went Tits Up

I’m at a salon. Not my salon. I don’t have a salon. I’m the sort of person who cuts her own fringe at 11pm with kitchen scissors and spends three weeks pretending it was intentional. So why am I here — trapped in what appears to be a luxury operating theatre for rich women slowly transforming into identical blonde aliens — remains entirely unclear. One minute I’m living my normal life. The next, I’m wedged awkwardly between Kylie’s two sidekicks like I’ve been summoned as an unwilling witness to the world's glossiest hostage situation. The salon itself glows with that terrifying level of cleanliness only expensive places achieve. Not a fingerprint. Not a speck of dust. Not a single split end in sight. Everything is white. White walls. White floors. White orchids balanced in places no orchid has any business surviving. Even the women look expensive. Smooth. Polished. Airbrushed by life itself. The stylists drift silently around in coordinated black outfits, carrying tiny glasses of cucumber water as though they contain the last remaining drops of youth itself. Somewhere in the distance, a woman laughs far too loudly while having her scalp exfoliated. And there — beneath a constellation of silver foils — sits Kylie. Birthday girl. Transformation queen. Martyr to modern beauty standards. Or perhaps their final casualty. Her natural brunette curls — which were perfectly lovely, by the way — are being slowly erased beneath layer upon layer of honey blonde foils. Strand by strand. Curl by curl. But it’s not just the hair. Oh no. This is a full renovation project. She’s had skincare treatments involving acids that sound capable of stripping paint. Fresh nails. False lashes. Brows sharp enough to slash tyres. Teeth whitened to near-death experience levels. And then… The lips Dear sweet Christ, the lips. Not lips anymore, really. More… two plump sausages stapled onto the lower half of her face. Honestly, there’s enough lip filler in there to float a medium-sized raft across the Bristol Channel. Sidekick One gasps beside me like she’s witnessing the second coming. “Oh my GOD,” she squeals. “You look amazzzzzing.” “Honestly,” Sidekick Two breathes, clutching her chest dramatically, “it’s SUCH a transformation.” I stare at Kylie. Then at the lips. Then back at Kylie. Truthfully, I’m struggling to see anything beyond them. I mean… fair play on the highlights. They’ve done a lovely job there. But it’s difficult to appreciate subtle hair work when someone’s lips look like they’ve been pumped by an entire keg of collagen. Hours pass. Possibly weeks. Time loses all meaning inside the salon. The outside world ceases to exist. Seasons may well have changed beyond those frosted windows. Governments could have fallen. Civilisations risen and collapsed. Meanwhile, my spine slowly compresses into the shape of a cashew while stylists aggressively fold foils around Kylie’s head with the concentration of surgeons separating conjoined twins. Nobody speaks above a reverent whisper. At one point, a woman emerges from beneath a hood dryer looking noticeably closer to death. My legs have gone numb. My soul has left my body twice to check on the washing. Finally, mercifully, Kylie is complete. The reveal happens slowly. She turns towards the mirror. Gasps erupt across the salon floor. Someone actually applauds. And then — at the front desk — disaster strikes. Sidekick Two reaches for her bank card. And before my brain can stop my mouth, I hear myself say: “Let me get this. Birthday treat.” Silence. My own voice echoes in my skull like the final sentence before a public execution. The receptionist smiles warmly and taps away at the till. I hand over my card with the confidence of someone pretending money isn’t real. Then, casually — FAR too casually — I ask: “How much was it?” The receptionist beams. “£2000.” I feel my spirit exit via my arsehole. “Rosie,” I whisper immediately, turning to her in panic. “Any chance we could maybe go halves?” Rosie slowly slides her bank card back into her purse. “The machine approved it. God can’t save you now.” Fuck. Two thousand pounds. For hair. For lips. For whatever chemical warfare they’ve unleashed upon Kylie’s face. I look at her again, desperate now. Desperate for some emotional reaction suggesting this £2000 act of financial self-harm had meant literally anything at all. “Do you like the makeover?” I ask weakly. Kylie blinks at herself in the mirror. “It’s awight,” she lisps through her swollen lips. Alright. ALRIGHT. Two thousand pounds. Two THOUSAND pounds. For highlights, filler, chemical peels and whatever medieval torture device they used on her eyebrows… and the verdict is alright? No thank you. No appreciation. Not even the dignity to lie. Just… it’s alright. Something inside me snaps clean in half. “Fuck this,” I yell, storming towards the door. “Don’t be wike that,” Kylie calls after me, her lips struggling heroically against basic consonants. Outside, the air feels cold and sharp against my face. I march down the street possessed entirely by the spirit of a woman who’s just accidentally financed another person’s cosmetic rebirth. And that’s when I see Ash. Usually, Ash radiates life. She talks in fireworks. Laughs with her whole body. Exists at a frequency slightly too powerful for ordinary civilisation. But today… Today she looks emptied out. Like life itself quietly crept into her bedroom overnight, unscrewed the top of her head and siphoned away every last drop of serotonin with a straw. “Ash?” I say carefully. “Are you okay, my love?” She shrugs, then silently points across the road. I follow her gaze. There, beneath flickering fluorescent lights, stands a shop with a giant sign above the window: SHOP & BOWL Her husband appears in the doorway, grinning with the confidence of a man moments away from bankruptcy. “New business!” he announces proudly. “You can shop and bowl.” I stare at him. Inside, people are attempting to bowl around aisles of tinned tomatoes. A child nearly concusses an elderly woman with a bowling ball near household cleaning. Someone slips beside frozen peas. A packet of Hobnobs explodes on impact. “It doesn’t really work, does it?” Ash mutters darkly. A loud crash erupts from somewhere near pet food. “And who has to clean up the tin aisle every day?” she continues, stabbing a finger into her own chest. “Old muggings here.” Her husband gives a thumbs up as a bowling ball takes out an entire display of kidney beans behind him. “Catch up soon, love,” Ash sighs. “There’s a cleanup in aisle hell.” By the time I get home, I already feel emotionally concussed. But the universe, apparently, isn’t finished with me yet. Because when I open the front door… children are singing. Slow. haunting singing. The sort of singing that immediately suggests either religion, possession, or the beginning of a BBC drama where everyone dies by episode three. A choir of pale children drifts through my hallway in ghostly white gowns, carrying candles that drip wax onto my new carpet with casual disregard. I freeze. One smiles at me serenely. “We’ve come to bring God into your home.” I didn’t invite God into my home. Especially not in bulk. Upstairs, I hear Maxi screaming obscenities through his headset. “YOU ABSOLUTE FU—” “MAXI!” I hiss, sprinting upstairs. I burst into his room to find the choir gathered around his gaming chair like Victorian sleep paralysis demons. Maxi barely glances away from the screen. “Can you get these arseholes out of my room?” “Language,” I snap automatically, while one candle-bearing child quietly stares at a pile of moulding bowls beside the bed. The choir begins singing again. Soft. Unsettling. Like they’re summoning something ancient from the wardrobe. “Ummm…” I interrupt awkwardly. “Lovely singing and all… but do you think you could maybe take this elsewhere?” The singing stops. One child steps forward solemnly. “Don’t you want to be saved?” I look around the room. The moudly bowls. The stale fug of teenage boy air. The dirty socks slowly evolving in the corner. Maxi himself screaming obscenities into a glowing headset like a man defending civilisation in the trenches. And honestly? Something in me wilts. “I think I’m too far gone, love” I admit, quietly. And for the first time in the dream, the joke lands somewhere deeper. Because all day I’ve watched people trying desperately to improve things. Better hair. Better faces. Better business ideas. Better souls. Better lives. And every single attempt somehow made everything slightly worse. The child looks wounded. “You cannot reject God.” “You also can’t just break into people’s houses,” I snap. “This is less salvation and more organised home invasion.” The choir exchanges nervous glances. One quietly steps on a Dorito. And then — The bedroom door creaks open. My husband appears. Eyes closed. Arms slightly outstretched. Fully asleep. Or possessed. Honestly, at this stage, either feels plausible. “Move out the way,” he mutters thickly. The choir falls silent. “You’re blocking the boobs.” And that, my fellow dreamers… is when I wake up. Pitch black bedroom. Heart hammering against my ribs. Mouth dry. And beside me, my husband — fully unconscious — smacks his lips in his sleep and murmurs: “…boobs…” And suddenly the entire dream rearranges itself in my mind. The salon. The filler. The performance. The exhaustion. The church choir barging into people’s homes trying to save them from themselves. Everybody wanting something. Selling something. Fixing something. Improving something. Nobody actually happy. Nobody even stopping to ask what was already enough before they started tearing it apart. And somewhere in the middle of all that noise… all that performance… all that endless grasping to become more… My sleeping husband, blissfully unconscious, free from all the performance, vanity and self-improvement — reduced the entire human condition down a one soft, single-mumbled truth: “…Boobs…” Which, now I think about it, really was the exact moment the whole day went tits up.