Patience is a virtue (or: just cut my damn hair!!)

I honestly think I have discovered the secret to truly embracing la dolce vita:

You simply need to forget any fast paced lifestyle you may have ever experienced. And you need to have patience. Oodles of the stuff.

This really dawned on me, funnily enough, on a recent trip to the hairdressers.
 My appointment was booked for 5.30pm. I arrived, got myself settled with a magazine. And waited.

And waited.

And waited a bit more.

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 In Italy it's normal not to run exactly to schedule. The term 'punctuality' isn't really used around these parts. People don't actually seem to know the meaning of it. So I kind of expected to wait 20 minutes, half an hour. Something like that.

After an hour I was getting really rather restless. Woman got their hair washed, blow dried, put into rollers.

I just sat there.

And finally, after a ridiculous 90 minutes, I was plonked in the chair and my split ends (there were many of them) were all cut off. She was surprisingly efficient.

Why on earth didn't you say anything? You may be wondering. Well, aside from the fact that I literally couldn't get a word in edge ways (hairdressers in general like to chat. Italian hairdressers are seriously something else), I kept having this (false) feeling that I was going to be the next one. Plus, I didn't want to seem bothered. No one else was. I didn't want to be that person.The uptight English girl.

It seems that, whether you go to a doctor, dentist or hairdresser, appointments actually mean diddly squat. If I can ever disprove this theory, I shall let you know. But for now, I can claim that patience really is a virtue here (strange for a country that doesn't know how to queue, isn't it?) You have to just be able to sit back and let things happen in the way they are going to happen.

There's a severe lack of patience here when the prospect of food is mentioned though... funny that. ;)