Somerset Hairdressers - Listening Skills and Emotional Empathy

Driving to Wells the other day, listening to BBC Radio 4. An item came on, an interview with someone from  the Hairdressers Representative Association, or similar.

The gist of the interview was that hairdressers play a huge role in their customers' emotional lives, with empathic listening skills, and understanding of their problems.

As this continued, I mentally worked through some local haircutting experiences.......

The one-off in Burnham-on-Sea, when visiting family, years ago. By the time I'd left the town centre, there was the odd sticky-uppy bit.  Within half an hour my hair was sticking up, out, all over the place.

Then there was another one-off in Weston super Mare. The woman who ran the place had recently parted  from her partner. Acrimoniously. Meanwhile, she took out her angers on my head. Here a cuff, there a cuff. I don't think my head was stationary for more than a couple of seconds throughout.

A neighbour of mine went into Cheddar for a haircut. Paid up, came home.
Paused to admire himself in the hallway mirror, as you do.
They hadn't actually finished the job. Half cut. Just stopped half way through.

A hairdressers in Wells I've used on several occasions. They do a good haircut. Empathic listening ? Endless chatter between the two people who run it.

And of course, there is the well-known barber near the bus station in Wells. Also does a good haircut. I think that the whole experience can be described thus. The waiting customers are the audience, while L, the proprietor, cuts hair and holds forth with his trenchant views on this, that, and his ex-wife. The account that I particularly recall described the problems that L had had with someone who repeatedly parked their car directly outside his house. The space that L regarded as his own.

The story ends, as L pauses from cutting, and turns wide-eyed towards the punters.... ,

"Is it my fault that an Alsation shit all over his door handle.....?".

Phillipa Rees Talk

Last week I drove up to Bristol for a talk by Phillipa Rees.
Loosely, it was about consciousness.

I was reasonably familiar, from about 20 years ago, with the theories of Rupert Sheldrake.
( Hypothesis of Formative Causation). I'd never heard of Phillippa Rees, and certainly was unaware that her work ( Involution ) had preceded that of Sheldrake, Irving Lazlo and others..., by many years. 

She spoke for 90 minutes. No yawns. No fidgeting.

Reference near the end to Phi - The Golden Ratio.