Paper Monitor: Spare us the cutter
Getting a haircut is a many splendoured thing.
Apparently the average woman's relationship with her hairdresser lasts longer (12 years and five months) than the typical marriage (just 11 years and six months).
Like a follicular Bridget Jones, however, Anna Maxted of the Daily Telegraph has never achieved lasting commitment with a stylist..
"Instead," she complains, "I've been cursed with a wretched series of one-night stands, during which I've been variously transformed into Hillary Clinton, Paul McCartney circa 1964, Frankenstein ('Mum, you look like that monster with bolts in his neck'), and, misguidedly, a flapper."
Despite this, the intimacy of the snipping process means she has learned more than she can ever have wished about her hairdressers.
"I know a remarkable amount about their lives: the grit of their failed relationships, their awful personal tragedies, each cocktail and smooch of their luxury holidays," says Maxted.
But the dynamic between coiffeuse and client is notoriously passive aggressive. Complaining is out of the question.
"Even if this person crafts your crowning glory into an approximation of a tortoiseshell cat in a gale, only a monster would say: 'No. It's not lovely.'"
Perhaps a good haircut, like true love, means never having to say you're sorry.