The convener of a new Creative Writing Group, Angela Dold,  spoke at the May U3A General Meeting. To show how the group functions, Angela read out the following story.

 

The story had to have these words in it somewhere: screeched, stretched, scrunched, scrounged, scratched, straights, strengths.

 

The Apprentice. 

 

By ©Angela Dold 

 

The woman in the chair nearest to where Aleisha sat, waiting, screeched in agony every time the hairdresser hooked a strand of hair, stretched it through a tiny hole in the rubber cap the client was wearing, and painted it with some muddy-looking, foul smelling mixture. 

 

Aleisha scrunched up her face in sympathy. She had had 'highlights' in her hair and she knew it was torture. But just recently, she'd had painless 'foils' and the results had been fantastic. Red hair had covered the top of her head, her white fringe had nearly covered her eyes and best of all, the blue patch on top gave her a New Zealand flag look. She had put sparkly hair clips where the stars were supposed to be. She wasn’t in favour of a flag change and her hair had heralded this fact for everyone to see. Now, she bragged, her spectacular hair design had helped the no-change result of the flag referendum. 

 

At the ripe old age of 17, Aleisha was of the opinion you had to put up with pain to look beautiful so, shrugging off the woman's suffering, she scrounged a pen from a waiting client and started to fill in an application form. That's what she was here for; to become a hairdresser's apprentice. 

 

Aleisha scratched her head over one or two of the required 'gap fills', her education had been sporadic to say the least, but she managed to answer most of the questions clearly. 

 

As she checked the page she heard one of the male hairdresser's telling his client the punch-line of a joke “...so Ducky, I said, only gays work here, no straights.” They laughed. Aleisha thought the joke a bit weak but smiled anyway. She was always non-judgmental – it was one of her strengths - an ability to get on with all kinds of people, so she signed her name with a flourish at the bottom of the form and handed it to the boss, Bertie. He read it and nodded.  “Aleisha, you might be just the girl we’re looking for.” 

 

Alert, ready for any challenge, Aleisha took the chewing gum out of her mouth, stuck it nonchalantly under her chair, crossed one leg provocatively over the other, and waited for orders.