Dream Job?

Everybody has a dream job. I was no exception. I wanted to turn up for work every day and have people happy to see me. I wanted my customers (or clients as I came to know them) to know my name and say thank you.

I left my old job as a company director for a national distribution company after I walked into the office at 5.42 am on a Friday morning to be greeted by a smug smile and the words ‘part timer’. I was competing with the company’s elderly salesman and resident lemon for the title of ‘Who can get to work earliest’.  I was 35 years old, divorced and sick of driving to work in the dark.

I needed to change my life. Something needed to be life changing, but after almost 20 years (yes I started working at 16) with the same company selling sausages and frozen peas I doubted my ability to change. So I did the only sensible think I could think of - I took a bottle of wine and a razor into the bath.

An hour later the bottle was empty and my legs had more nicks than a sixteen year old’s jaw. Swirls of blood rose to the surface of the water, short shafts of hair drifted to the bottom. The bath was gross, I was drunk, but I had the answer. I was going to learn to remove hair without blood. I was going to become a beautician.

Two years later I opened the doors to my new salon. I’d learn much during that time: that life isn’t about who gets up earliest; that change is possible no matter how old or set in your ways you are and if you cut a chunk of flesh from your client’s vagina she won’t bleed – much.