Ghosts in the salon

It’s not even lunchtime and the day is becoming surreal already. Last week I pitched up to have my hair cut only to be informed I was late – 24 hours late. Too late. So I rebooked and got ready for a second coming this morning.

Chatted on Twitter (as you do). ‘Get them doing conscious breathing, visualisation, meditation, communing with God,’ said one tweepfriend. Well, he didn’t put it quite like that, but that was the gist. ‘Oh don’t be daft,’ I replied. ‘It’s a tea and biscuits place. We’ll talk about holidays.’ Except, I didn’t say exactly that (140 characters and all).

But, blow me down with a feather. I’m sitting there, stroking the head of the attendant flat-coated retriever while having my mop tamed and I ask the hairdresser possibly THE most innocuous question ever. ‘How’s it going?’ Thinking she’d tell me about her new patio or her holiday in Bulgaria.

‘Well,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a bit of a ghost problem.’ And she goes on to tell me about her haunted attic and how her teenage son won’t sleep there anymore on account of all the groaning. And she continues to tell me how she’s getting the priest to come in and do a bit of deliverance. And I sort of mutter quietly about how she could do a bit of DIY stuff, horribly aware that there’s this woman with her hair in tin foil about three foot away who is listening in and probably thinking, ‘Wayhay, local fruitloop alert’. Except she then chimes in and says, ‘Absolutely. You can use sound as well – just make sure you leave the windows open.’ And we’re off – discussing effective space clearing and entity evacuation techniques from around the world – all thoughts of tea, biscuits and Bulgarian beaches out the window.

So, when the snipping is done, I end up demonstrating Space Clearing 101 – with Introduction to Clapping Techniques – to a chorus of affirming nods and claps from Mrs Tin Foil.
I take a bow and go to pay. ‘Sorry,’ I say to the woman on the till. ‘That was probably a bit weird.’
‘Oh God, no,’ she replied. ‘I’ve got an awful entity myself. If the dog doesn’t sleep on the bed, I get this hand stroke my back.’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘God no,’ she says. ‘I sleep on my own. And it’s not even nice stroking.  Sort of a large hand and rather rough.’
‘Can’t you move the bed?’ I say, helpfully.
‘No, the room’s too small,’ she replies. ‘Anyhow, it’s fine. If the dog’s not there, I just use a pillow.’

Ye gods, I love Exmoor people. They're just so flipping pragmatic. Pillow placement for ghost-containment.  Who'd a thought?