Ellie Phillips - Scissors Sisters & Manic Panics

Guideline 2: Thames Gateway Junior Apprentice Hairdresser (or Barber) of the Year Award

Uncle Zé said he thought being fired would be the making of me. He took me next door to his café and gave me pancit with pork, which is one of his best ‘cheering up’ dishes.

‘Your aunt doesn’t mean to be fierce, anak , but you know what she’s like. We all have to do what we’re told. You know what? Everyone gets fired once in their lives. See it as an opportunity. You can have a fresh start – maybe somewhere you have a bit more freedom to try stuff out. Somewhere with younger customers maybe?’

He was right. Working at Delilah’s wasn’t like my dream job or anything. It’s not a particularly good salon, but I’m kind of fond of it. I have spent countless hours there. I know every inch, every chair and its quirks, every tap, every dryer. I probably took my first steps on that floor and I’ve played a million games on it too. When we were shorties, my cousin Billy and I would line up the mixing pots and the brushes and pretend that the Pot People were going into battle with the Brush People. I was on first-name terms with the curlers – I swear I knew every hairpin in the box. That salon had been my world for the longest time. It was my anchor. OMG – not to be too dramatic, but that salon was my life . . .

Two fat tears fell into my pancit .

‘ Anak , that dish has plenty salt as it is,’ said Uncle. ‘It needs something, but it’s not salt.’ Then he winked at me, which of course made me cry even more.

‘Stop being so nice to me, tito – you’re making it worse!’ I pleaded.

‘I’m your tito , my job is to make it worse,’ said Uncle Zé.

Anyone who knows me knows that Uncle Zé is basically my dad. In fact there was a moment – last year, before I found Abe – when I thought that Uncle Zé actually was my dad. No, really! I began to think my mum had been lying to me all these years and that my ‘dad’ wasn’t an anonymous sperm donor that she carefully chose off the Internet at all. I started to suspect that Uncle Zé was maybe more than just my uncle. At the time when I was having these suspicions my boyfriend Tony Cruz said my life was like something from the Mid West of America, where people find out that their cat is really their brother or whatever. My cousin Billy and I went on a crazy trail, hacking into Mum’s PC looking for clues about my ‘donor’, and of course, the truth was far less twisted than I feared. My dad turned out to be a Mr Abraham Smith, Municipal Gardener from Bough Beeches, Kent.

So Abe is half of my genes – I like to think of him as the generous half. After all, it takes proper generosity to help someone to have a baby and not shout about it. If Aunt Lilah did something like that she’d expect a double page spread in Heat or The Hackney Gazette or something. But Abe is not like that. He’s pretty chilled and his hands shake like mine do when he’s nervous. This was practically the first thing I noticed when me and Mum went to meet up with him last October – a whole year ago now.

That meeting was a pretty special moment in my life, because even though Abe didn’t exactly seem like my dad he did seem like a nice guy, and now that we’ve got to know each other better I can honestly say that he is a nice guy. When I see him he asks me loads of questions and then he listens to my answers! These are two things I am not used to. In my actual family, people ask you questions like, ‘Do you think I deserve to be spoken to like that?’ or ‘Who died and made you Queen?’ or, if it’s Great Aunty Rita (my oldest known living relative), ‘Do you have a nice Jewish boyfriend yet, bubelah ?’

Abe asks me about my ambitions, about what I’m good at, my likes, my dislikes. Even his girlfriend Sarah talks to me like I’m an adult – like we’re on a level. Sarah is pretty cool, but fussy about her hair, which is straight and thin and which she likes to hide behind. She’s one of those people who’s really really sensitive – like I bet she notices if you take a millimetre too much off her fringe. I was kind of honoured on my third visit to Bough Beeches when Sarah said I could do her hair. I think it was a big deal for her, and I made sure that I didn’t screw up.

I shared my philosophy on hair with her and also my top tips on hairdresser-spotting, which are as follows:

1. Hairdressers often have things stuck to their clothing – like section clips or Kirby grips. That’s because hairdressers need (but don’t have) three hands; two to do the hair and an extra one with an elongated arm to take out the clips and put them in a box on the other side of the salon. Because we only have two hands we end up sticking the clips to ourselves and then forgetting we put them there until we’re at a restaurant or a barmitzvah and a kind stranger points out that we’ve had a section grip stuck to the bottom of our jumper for the last hour, which members of our own family neglected to mention.

2. Hairdressers are often to be found asleep on the tube at about 8.30 p.m. on a Saturday night. Sometimes they’re the people that wake up in the tube terminus at High Barnet or Amersham or other weird places you’ve never been to. You see Saturday is the busiest day of the week for a hairdresser. You stand up for ten hours cutting, washing and brushing other people’s hair, and by closing up time you are a wreck. There’s absolutely no chance you’ll get up the energy to go out yourself. That’s why some hairdressing salons are like nightclubs, with loud music and crazy hair and clothes – because this is the substitute for a night out for a hard-working hairdresser. Actual hairdresser nights out usually occur on a Monday when the salon has been closed all day.

3. Hairdressers are acquaintance magnets. A hairdresser at a party may inspire a queue. Once the secret is out that you do hair you will never be entirely friendless, but unless you insist on charging for your services from the word ‘go’, you may end up penniless. So, if you see a tramp-woman with fabulous hair, the chances are she used to be a hairdresser. That’s a bit like the 50p lady round our way; her clothes are always in tatters and she generally looks as if she’s never eaten a square meal in her life, but every so often she gets her hair done and it’s surprisingly chic. Someone told me she used to be a hairdresser and I believe them. It totally figures.

As I explained all this to Sarah, it did make me wonder why on earth I’d chosen this career in the first place. But the point is I have chosen it. And I am totally 100 per cent committed to it.

Well, Abe just sat and watched us while I was cutting Sarah’s hair and listened to me talk. He didn’t interfere like your normal, real dad might – like Uncle Zé would, for example. You see I realised quite early on in our relationship that Abe might be my biological dad, but he was never going to be Dad. He’s just Abe – he’s like this extra relative I have who happens to be a nice guy. While I was cutting Sarah’s hair he was a little nervous – his hands shook a bit. But my hands didn’t shake while I was cutting because I am NOT nervous about hair. Because I know I’m good at it. At least, I thought I was until Aunt Lilah fired me.

Now Uncle was doing his ‘dad’ bit and picking up the pieces. He waved a tenner at me.

‘You buy yourself a treat with that,’ he said. ‘Put it towards new clothes or something.’

‘I can’t, tito . I’ve just been fired. I don’t deserve it.’

‘Course you do; you work hard. I work hard, your Aunt Lilah works hard. We all work hard.’ Then he stood up and said, ‘That pancit needs more fish sauce,’ before disappearing into the kitchen.