I decided to get my hair cut this morning and my wife came along for company.  It is a shop run by a group of young women and they are all compassionate towards M.  She found the shop a bit claustrophobic so she went out into their rear garden to sit on  a bench and take the sea air.

E cut my hair today and she asked me how things were going.  It was the first time she had seen M since stroke and she was shocked by the transformation since she had last seen her. I was in the chair for 15 minutes or so and M came in from the garden just as the finishing touches were being applied to my head.  I paid up and we left to make our way to M’s chiropody appointment.

M seemed rather quiet as we walked the short distance to the chiropodist.  On route she suddenly said: ‘tell her not to wear perfume the next time she comes to see you’.  I asked her who she meant and she said; ‘ the black haired one – she said she’s been to our house’.   This puzzled me somewhat as her description was of someone I didn’t know.  However, I took the opportunity of finding out who this figment of her imagination was.

I decided to walk back to collect our car, and call in at the hairdressers, to try to make sense of M’s comments.  Sure enough the young girl who had been keeping an eye on her in the garden had long black hair.  By the look of her she was young enough for me to have been her granddad.  The girls in the shop smiled when I told them of M’s concerns.  Funnily enough they are all aware of M’s problems with hypersensitivity to perfume.  Not that any of them even know where we live but if they were to call they would be unlikely to wear perfume.

It’s puzzling where such suspicions come from but I am hoping that if my wife has an eye out for me in the future she will consider my age.  I don’t think that I would have had a lot in common with the youngster with the long black hair.