Tame The Mane 💇

Happy Friday!

This week I believe in hairs!

After last week's missive on rejection, this week I've dabbled in a little rejection therapy. I can't tell you the story of what I tried on Wednesday, but I can describe what happened when I took rejection out for a spin yesterday.

Picture the scene...

Drenched on the aptly named Fishponds Road, I walk out of the rain and into a hair salon. A lone woman sits in an armchair (I can already see that it's a special kind of salon), footling with her phone.

'Hi there. I've got a bit of a strange request.'
Oh god. That sounds like I'm going to ask for a lumbar massage.
'Well, it's not that strange. I'll explain. I'm a comedy writer and - '
Confused looks. Legitimise, legitimise!
'It's for the BBC.'
Back on track.
'It's a sitcom set in a hair salon and I like to come into salons and, you know, soak up the atmosphere.'
What am I saying? Who, you know, knows that?
'Would you mind if I sat here for fifteen minutes, if you're not busy - or you can get on with what your doing, I can sit in the corner while you...'

This is a definite no.

She puts her phone down: 'Would you like a cup of tea?'

I've caught Lara at a good moment. She's got 15 minutes before her next client - an unusual occurrence at Tame The Mane, the only all-vegan, all-natural hair salon in the UK.

Teaching English to Libyan teenagers divided by Gaddafi's Little Green Book, Lara dreamt of escaping that dead-end and running her own business. She spent 3 years writing up a business plan to set up a cafe, before her little brother had the temerity to suggest she open a salon.

Temerity because Lara hates hairdressers and, even more so, salons. She couldn't sleep for three nights after her brother's infuriating suggestion.

But the barb had lodged.

'I've loved hairdressing since I was five or six. I used to beg my grandmother to do her hair. Every Sunday night: Can I do your hair, can I do your hair?'

As a teenager, Lara learnt hairdressing from an Italian woman and cutting hair became a great sideline for cash right through her English degree and even while she was teaching.

Then she realised that maybe her brother had a point: she couldn't be the only one who hated your typical salons.

Sometimes we struggle to see what was right in front of us all along.

Tame The Mane looks more like a stylish living room than a styling salon. Potted plants crawl along any available surface. The walls are decorated with portraits of colourful women - not crass posed photographs, but original oils and pastels.

Lara wanted to create an anti-salon atmosphere and thought that her all-vegan, all-natural approach would draw in an exclusively (and quite possibly penniless) hippie clientele.

There's a record player ('Can't play records, though, because of all the hair - didn't think that one through') and a bookcase where she does book swaps.

But she was far wrong about the hippies.

The mirrors are covered with scarfs, and Lara will only remove them if a client asks. So she gets a lot of clients who suffer from anxiety in other salons. 'I get people who haven't set foot in a salon for years.'

(Plus it's weird, huh, having someone watch your every move while you do your job. I hate people looking over my shoulder when I write.)

Lara passes me what looks like a laminated menu. It's a lucid explanation about why she only uses natural products, about how the salon business is so often built on convincing customers to put crap in their hair.

She offers suggestions about how we can reduce our reliance on products that aren't all that different to Fairy Liquid, from diluting harsh shampoos to simply using a squeeze of lemon juice.

The back of the 'menu' has two recipes for Lara's products: an oat conditioner and a flax gel. They sound delicious. There are more on her blog, free for you to create for yourself. If you don't have the time, Lara's got her own apothecary out the back.

With a mischievous smile she suggests that, if you want a protein-enriched wash, you should really just crack an egg on your head (although not in her vegan salon). It strengthens the hair, and gives a really nice shine, she says.

As an English graduate, Lara often dreams of writing her salon stories up. I'm lucky to have the chance to turn lives like hers into, well, this. And who knows what snippets from our conversation might turn up in Series 3 of Foiled...

'SYLVA'

It is natural for a man to feel an aweful and religious terror when placed in the centre of a thick wood. John Evelyn (1664)

We point at the stand of trees that soar into the waterside air. Arranged in tribal rows, they are branchless for five metres before spreading spare spindly arms to the sky.

We speculate. Birch? Larch? Aspen?

I open the Woodland Trust app and we try to identify the trees from their only distinguishing feature: the bark, striated with fissures running deep in a sort of triangular fusion.

'Twigs are amber or slightly pink - no - and hairless - maybe.'
'Can you see any woody knobs?'
'This one's a hermaphrodite.'

It's an entertaining game, but a lot like trying to guess someone's Christian name from their birthmarks.

A man walks by on the path.
'Excuse me, you don't know what these trees are, do you?'
Without breaking stride: 'Poplars, int they?'

Whence comes this easy knowledge?

The juice of poplar leaves, dropp’d into the ears, asswages the pain; and the buds contus’d, and mix’d with honey, is a good collyrium for the eyes; as the unguent to refrigerate and cause sleep.

Thighs of Steel

Last year, long time readers may remember, I cycled from Ljubljana to Sofia with Thighs of Steel, a community of not-so-serious cyclists doing some really serious cycling to raise money for a grassroots refugee centre in Athens.

Some of you beautiful people donated to the cause and, in total, we raised over £80,000.

Well, I have two pieces of news.

1) Khora's New Home

After a difficult year, Khora (the aforementioned community centre) are soon to open a new cafe space, providing a safe place to access good nutritious food as well as somewhere to relax and build community.

The refugee crisis is pretty much out of the news, but it's still a tough reality for the many thousands of people who've arrived in Athens.

The wait for an answer about their asylum claim can take years, leaving individuals and families in limbo, often without secure housing, the possibility of getting a job, and without money or facilities to cook healthy food.

Thighs of Steel 2018 raised enough to pay the rent and bills (all the boring stuff) for this new cafe for a whole year. The world’s not quite sorted yet, but your help made this amazing project possible!

2) Dave's New Job

On Wednesday, the Thighs of Steel organisers invited me to join the Inner Thighs and be a part of the core team for the last 3 weeks of the ride this year, between the classical capitals of Rome and Athens.

I'll be cycling over 1,700km, climbing over 23,000m, fixing punctures in 4 different countries, setting up wild campsites on Croatian beaches and in Albanian forests, driving the fabled Calypso through mountain passes, and cooking many fat meals for dozens of ravenous cyclists.

I'll try not to get heat stroke this time.

If you fancy joining me, applications open for London-Athens at the end of March. Follow Thighs on Facebook, Instagram or join their mailing list for updates, training rides, and the booking form when the fateful moment arrives.

I've published 5 books, including stories of hitch-hiking from London to Ben Nevis, and cycling 4,110 miles around Britain. Visit my tiny book shop.

The ebooks are Pay What You Want, so you choose the price tag. Can't say fairer than that.

This morning, my friend and fellow round Britain cyclist Anna Hughes launched an ambitious campaign to find 100,000 other souls who can pledge to make 2020 a flight free year.

After 8 years of (almost) no flying, I was delighted to tell my No Aeroplanes story on the Flight Free blog.

I love travelling almost as much as I love writing you this newsletter, but I have never loved travel more than since I gave up those cigar-shaped metal things that fly through the air.

Try it?

Right! I'm off to finish editing something VERY EXCITING.

Smashing Sundays is the new podcast from Lucy Pinder (model and actress) and Beth Granville (comedy writer and actress) in which they discuss the quintessential British Sunday with a guest comedian, actor or musician.

Listen to Episode 1 with Tori Scott on Audioboom now - Episode 2 (edited by yours truly) with the LUSH Gabrielle Fernie is out on Sunday.

Assuming I don't accidentally delete it or something. Which would be a shame because it's funny as fuck.

You didn't know I was a sound editor as well, did you? Nor did I, to be fair.

Much love,
- dc

CREDITS

David Charles wrote this newsletter. David is co-writer of BBC Radio sitcom Foiled, and also writes for The Bike Project, Elevate and Thighs of Steel. He can be found at davidcharles.info and on Twitter @dcisbusy

Strange things that shouldn't work
But kind of do

#1: The Body Test

When you're not sure what decision to make, stand up straight and ask the question of your body. Close your eyes and see which way you begin to fall or lean.

If you tilt forwards, the answer to your question is yes; backwards and the answer is no.

Thanks to P for this strange thing that shouldn't work, but kind of does.