Hair today gone tomorrow: Are You Loyal To Your Hairdresser?

My hair is a nightmare. It always has been. It's so thick that over the years literally every single person who has touched or washed it has commented on it (usually by saying "Wow, you have really thick hair!"as if I've never noticed before). There is a LOT of it. And it's slightly wavy but not curly enough to allow me to embrace truly big hair.

With hair I like this, I need a hairdresser I can rely on. But for pretty much my entire adolescence, I couldn't find a hairdresser who could tame my tresses.

So as soon as I found a decent hairdresser I had to stick to her like glue. In the wrong hands, I might still end up with the dreaded Christmas Tree Head, a terrible condition known to all of us with thick, longish hair. (Read about Triangle Head here).

For a while, I found a hair genius but when she moved on her old employers wouldn't tell me where she'd gone. This is often the way - salons don't want to lose clients. The thing is, I wasn't there for the salon, I was there for my genius stylist.  And then she disappeared and I never saw her again.  We haven't written about this subject for five long years, it's so traumatic.

Then, a few years ago, I found my dream hairdresser. She was recommended to me for my wedding by colleagues  and on my wedding day, she managed to get my mad mane into a sleek up do that stayed up until I went to bed (and had to spend half an hour taking out all the pins and untangling all the back combing, but it was worth it). After that day, she proved her skills by expertly using her scissors to make my naturally Christmas Tree shaped mane look like normal shoulder length hair. She is a genius.

Also, she has a pet pug, and once it called into the salon and I got to play with it (I do love pugs).

She's now been cutting my hair for five years, but a few weeks ago, I got a text from her - she was moving to a new salon, and she gave me the details. And I was so, so relieved she'd let me know. Because I know that her old colleagues would probably have closed ranks when I next rang to book an appointment, and I'd have had to roam the streets of Dublin, gazing into salon windows in the hope of spying her (or the pug). Well, okay, I wouldn't have, but I'd have felt the urge. This is exemplary hairdresser behaviour, and I salute it.

But is it just because my hair's so unruly that I feel so loyal to my hairdressers? Do you HAVE to have your hair done by the same person each time? Or, if a salon has a decent reputation, do you trust any of their employees to do a good job? And if you're the loyal type, have you ever been left bereft by a vanished stylist?

Please do not use this post to promote individuals or salons.