I'm qualified to brush the off-cuts in any direction I choose: roulettes of sickening blonde deluge, brunette sandstorms, windfalls of grey in a downward economy.

On Tuesdays I hold the combs. I like black ones, they caution the dan-drift with a monochrome reprimand; calcareous flurries arranged in a murder reconstruction, a scalping perhaps.

The brunette with the orchestrated trim eyes me from the ascension of her fringe, asking after weekend 'highlights' in a possible pun scenario.  I'm tempted to divulge how I masturbated into an empty cereal box - only to face the moral quandary as to whether it still qualified for the green bin; she might admire my candour, I imagined, beneath the din of dryers,

'Nothing much' I replied, 'I had breakfast in bed'.  She'll probably fill in the details herself. 

Life digresses in epicycles: cushier to ride than the uni variety, but they wouldn't pass for a circus act.

I am working towards an NVQ Level 2 in Hair Clippings.  The parole officer said it amounted to a PhD in Moldova, where ethnic tensions have led to a daytime ban on all keratin pruning. I begin to dream of revolutionary exploits in underground salons; crested in infamous devil's mullet, Übermensch of the Follicle Freedom Party; when my addiction to peroxide fumes spins me into a mild dystopia and I collapse into the San Tropez and awake somewhere between cinnabar and rustic barn.