Comsumer problems!

On Saturday I went into Manchester to have my hair done and to have my eyebrows threaded. The hair bit is quite relaxing, as my hairdresser knows by now what I expect. And part of that involves relaxing head massage. I could quite happily go in every day and have my hair done just for the head massage.

Having my eyebrows tidied up is a different kettle of fish. When I was younger I just ignored my eyebrows. They were quite acceptable as they were. As in fact were my legs. I am not sure if this is the case for all redheads but I only ever grew very fine blonde hairs on my legs and could ignore them. Old(ish) age and (relative) decrepitude has put a stop to that. The blonde hairs on my legs have turned darker and need removing. As for the eyebrows, well they seem to have grown, thicker and coarser and have developed a tendency for one or two to grow longer than is at all acceptable. And then there are the occasional pure white ones! So something has had to be done in recent years.

Each time I go and have my eyebrows threaded - a procedure involving a young lady holding a thread in her teeth and round one hand and tweaking hairs out - I am told off by the young lady in question. The procedure is quite quick and more uncomfortable than painful, but it is necessary for the victim to hold the eye shut and stretch the eyebrow skin to ensure a quick extraction of hairs. The young lady accuses me, with some justification, of using tweezers between visits - “tweezing” she calls it x and tells me it makes the threading more painful.

She tells me I should visit her “brow bar” every month. This may be true but who has the time, or the inclination, to go and do thus every month? Besides, I suspect it is a ploy to boost custom!

Around and in between the beauty treatments I fit in a bit of shopping. One of the things I did on Saturday was visit the new Gap store in the Arndale Centre. Not radically different from the old store off St Ann’s Square, except that it has a wider range than the old store had during the time it was winding down, it is nonetheless quite bright and glitzy.

I purchased a few items as Christmas presents, it having become a kind of tradition that I buy articles of clothing for the grandchildren. At the checkout I discussed the various discounts that were available to me - quite a good range in fact. Then I remembered that I might need “gift receipts”, in case the parents of the grandchildren needed to return them to the store for one reason or other. The poor cashier got very flustered and in the end I gave up,on fancy receipts, paid my bill, packed up the goods and left.

As I exited from the store, something “pinged”. Was that me, I asked, only to be told by another shop assistant that they were doing something that was causing the ping.

And at the entrance of every other shop I visited, something “pinged”.

Ridiculous!

I went on my way.

At home, later in the evening, I sorted my purchases and discovered three items that still bore their security tags - impossible to remove! The cause of the pings. So today, when I went to Italian conversation, I had to take the stuff with me and get the tags removed!

 Very annoying but still, it could have been worse. It could have been Christmas Eve when I began wrapping parcels and discovered the inconvenient tags.

 Always look on the bright side!