Midnight at the salon: back in the awesome hands of my hairdresser after lockdown

Someone is kneading my scalp, nape and behind my ears: long, masterful, hypnotic strokes that make my shoulders unclench for the first time since March. It’s not erotic, but it is profoundly sensuous in the Miltonic, non-sexual sense. I am Meryl Streep having her hair washed by Robert Redford in Out of Africa. I am all the women Warren Beatty lays hands on in Shampoo. A stranger’s touch after months of choreographed avoidance feels curiously deviant. It is also completely and utterly