Why vouchers aren’t always good news and hairdressers should stick to talking about the weather

I cheated on my hairdresser.

I knew I shouldn't  – but I got a voucher. I know you’ll understand. Reputable chain, 50% off, and with the senior stylist. It was, to coin a phrase, ‘a no-brainer.’

Before you go imagining a wonky fringe, yellow highlights or a hideous bowl cut, my hair is fine.

But I am not. It was horrific. I left feeling slightly dirty, relatively traumatised, and with a solemn vow never to return.

I have been trying to determine why.

At first I thought it was because my hairdresser, Pete from Darlington, spent the full hour sleazily cracking onto me. ‘I’m not gay’ he said within 3 minutes. I politely laughed. It is unfortunate that the nature of the set up meant he was looking directly at me for an hour.

But I think the problem lay deeper than his less than subtle chat up lines. An example of one such line: ‘You remind me of someone.’ (Dramatic pause.) ‘Someone I once slept with.’

Horror.              

The problem was that he wasn’t following the unwritten (but entirely real) laws of being English. As a hairdresser he should have been well versed in the art of small talk and interaction with total strangers. But he wasn't. 

He knew my name. This in itself was problematic. We English do not like strangers to know our names. Nor do we wish to know theirs. Certainly not until a much greater degree of friendship has been established. But as I had given my real name at booking, it was reasonable that he might refer to me as it. But he shortened it, without permission, or years of friendship to excuse it. ‘Rach’ he repeatedly called me. Crime of all crimes: over-familiarity.

He continued down this line of crimes against the English, moving, with pace and without grace onto another: invasion of privacy. Does he not realise that we are a reserved and inhibited bunch? Invasion of privacy is a very serious matter, punishable in a court of law. We are taught as children to mind our own business, not to hang our dirty laundry in public and never, oh lord never, to be a nosy parker.

Pete was a nosy parker.  Pete, listen up. It is not polite to ask me what I do for a living, why I moved, do I have children, am I married, how old I am, where I live, which gym I attend, my motivation for exercising, where I like to drink, why my last 2 relationships failed or my bra size. Only the last one is made up. And he may have asked this whilst the hairdryer was blasting. Prying bastard.

Crime three. Perhaps this was the crime, being trapped as I was, that made me feel most violated. He was touchy bloody feely. Please know that I do not have ‘personal-space issues.’ I like affection, hugging and friendly touching with a very select group of people. Casual acquaintances and my current creepy hairdresser are not in this group. Even with my closest friends I am still not entirely sure what to do. Should we hug or kiss? Is it one kiss or two? Where should we put our hands? But the most pressing question of all, why does the hairdresser keep touching me?

I must say, I was reminded of the time I shook the hand of a removal man, with whom I had been acquainted just long enough for him to move a sofa, and he kissed me sloppily on the face. But that’s a story for another day.

Pete kept touching me. Obviously he had to touch my hair and head for the purpose of the haircut. But my shoulder? My neck? My back?

I’m sure you’re wondering if I said something. If I asked this gentleman to cease his interrogation, stop touching me, and kindly refer to me as Miss Brown – if at all?

Well of course not, it wouldn’t be terribly polite to do that would it now? I am English you know.


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Who on earth pays full price at Pizza Express?

Coupons are cool. Or at least that’s what I'm telling myself.

I had long embraced a ‘voucher’ even before the imposed ‘Saving Regime,’ but a pleasant side effect of the present economic climate is the increase of them. Thank you very much recession.

Do you remember going to Pizza Express without a voucher? No, me neither. But apparently it did happen in the dim and distant past. Probably just before the time people started incessantly saying that they ‘had an app for that.’

When Pizza Express approached a British marketing agency several years ago, they had just a few sacks of postbags with customer contact details on them.

By sending out some forward-able two-for-one vouchers that could be downloaded from the firm's website they attracted over 4.5 million diners (plus a database of 3m customers' details) keen to take them up on the offer.

With the economy slowing and unemployment soaring, it seems consumers are looking for ways to pinch pennies anywhere they can. Although this would suggest that they want to have their pizza and eat it.

Needless to say, other restaurant chains soon caught onto this idea. If any of this is news to you then sign up immediately at www.vouchercodes.co.uk for a weekly email of the best deals online and in stores. Click through, do it now. I don’t get any kick backs; although if vouchercodes would like to give me any, I accept cash or cheque.

When you book car hire, theatre tickets, flights, do your grocery shopping, or anything else online, you usually see a little box giving the option to input a loyalty, membership or special offer code. It's all too easy to ignore, but don't - typing the correct few letters can give a significant discount on the subsequent price. Thankfully, you don't need to actually be a loyal customer; you just need to google it. Open a new window right there and search for ‘discount code for ‘insert website here.’

There’s a widespread belief among the non-coupon set that ‘only poor people use coupons.’ Of course this is ridiculous, although some people are genuinely afraid of a stigma, as old fashioned paper coupons were once viewed as an embarrassing badge of stinginess.

Perhaps there is still a stigma surrounding these coupons saving you 20p off your milk or offering half price detergent; but new technologies like online voucher codes and club cards with automatic savings have pushed discounts into the mainstream.

Nowadays you just have to flash your phone screen to a staff member to get your money off. No ‘paper-coupon-possible-stigma’ in sight. Apparently, mobile coupons remove the stigma of discounting because your discount vouchers - delivered via sleek and expensive smartphones - are sexy and novel.

Frankly a discount is a discount, but if you would rather partake in ‘sexy and novel’ saving, then Vouchercloud is one such miracle saving app that will automatically find the best deals nearest to you and deliver a coupon straight to your ‘sleek’ (or otherwise) smartphone.

So be out and proud, become a coupon enthusiast. The real question is why you wouldn’t want to? Surely all it means is that you are a savvy shopper who knows the way to get the very best prices for the products you buy.

Sorry, backtrack - did I just say that there was an app for that?