Coronavirus Could Be The End Of Small Talk And I Couldn’t Be Happier

While we all count down the days until the rumoured reopening of hair salons next month, it’s also very apparent that the experience will never be the same again. For a start, we’ll be acknowledging safety measures such as social distancing from fellow customers, the salon will be far less full than normal in order to do that, the hairdresser will likely be wearing PPE, and we’ll all be wearing masks. And, if reports are to be believed, we won’t be chatting about if we’re ‘going anywhere nice’ on holiday either.

Salons and barbershops are expected to reopen on July 4 as part of the continued easing of lockdown measures, although no formal announcement has yet been made. Reports have claimed that banning chatting with your hairdresser could also be on the cards. As part of the National Hair and Beauty Federation’s guidelines to help salons reopen, it has been decreed that chat should be avoided where possible to reduce the spread of infection.

Any discussions that take place in person should be kept 'to a minimum', read the guidelines, and be conducted via the mirror while standing behind the client. 'You can lower the risk of infection by standing side-by-side rather than facing people,' the document continues.

As someone who has always yearned for silence during hairdressing appointments, this is music to my ears. Life is so full of noise, the idea of sitting for three hours with nothing to do but read an old dog-eared magazine is bliss to me (though from now on we’ll have to bring our own, as unhygienic shared magazines are a no-no in this new era). Struggling to fill awkward silence? Not so much.

It’s not that I’m rude, or the silent type. I’m sure my husband wishes I was the silent type, because in day to day life I never shut up. When it comes to my beauty appointments, however, I crave silence. There’s something nightmarish about the pressure of kicking off a chat that you then have to maintain throughout. More than that, we have to maintain communication in all walks of modern life: WhatsApp chats need to be tended to, email senders are constantly ‘circling back’ to make sure you’ve got them, Instagram DMs are waiting for a response and now we have Zoom socialising to tick off too.

That we will be potentially ordered to keep schtum in an array of day-to-day situations in order to protect our health in life post-lockdown feels like a liberating move to me. I’m 36, the world is imploding and I’ve simply run out of the energy for enforced small talk.

This new rule could take a while to catch on, though. I went for a smear test last week and despite the fact the nurse was basically in a full hazmat suit with a perspex screen across her face for her and my safety, we still managed to discuss the weather while her speculum was inside my vagina.

The small talk ban can’t come soon enough.