Double-waxed

Our nearest town has two Turkish barbers.

On my first visit to the one in the high street I was bowled over by the service, which included the offer of a strong cup of Turkish coffee.

Since then I've swapped between the two but I prefer the one in the high street because you can normally park within 50 yards (I don't like walking) and it's right next to the bank.

As you can imagine it doesn't take long to 'cut' my hair these days so they extend the process by wrapping my head in a hot towel for five minutes or so.

Fortunately they make sure there's a small hole so I can breathe otherwise I wouldn't be writing this.

Another part of the service involves setting fire to a stick and 'burning' any unwanted hair from my ears.

There is a brief moment of pain but it's over very quickly and it seems churlish to refuse.

Yesterday however I experienced something new that I really didn’t like.

I heard the words "nose" and "ears" but I wasn't paying attention so I just nodded obligingly, as you do.

What followed was wholly unexpected.

After disappearing into a back room the young barber returned with two sticks whose cotton bud style tips were coated with large globules of blue wax.

These were inserted into each nostril which left me looking like Rowan Atkinson playing a raving loony in Blackadder Goes Fourth.

The barber disappeared for a second time, returning with more wax that he spread around the edge and just inside my outer ears.

Like the sticks hanging from my nose, there were sticks attached to the wax that had been applied to my ears.

For the next ten minutes the barber walked around checking his phone while I nervously awaited his next move.

Finally he decided it was time to complete the process. Grabbing the two sticks that were protruding from my nose, he tugged ... hard.

He then did exactly the same with the sticks that were dangling from my ears.

Twenty-fours later I am prepared to look back on the experience more generously than I did at the time.

At that moment however it felt like the inside of my nose had been ripped out, which I suppose it had.

My ears – which had been similarly assaulted – felt equally tender and I still had to undergo the burning flame.

God knows why because there can't have been any hair left to burn off.

Anyway, to compound the humiliation, my Turkish torturer actually laughed at my reaction.

So did my wife when I told her about it.

"You've been waxed," she said.

"Double-waxed," I sniffed.

"That will teach you to listen properly," she added, unsympathetically.

So ends this public information post.