Even the most well-practised reminisces, though, don’t keep me from everyday life in the Netherlands. Today I took the plunge and let a Dutchman cut my hair. More fool me.

With an overdrawn back account and a maxed-out credit card to my name, I opt for an 8 euro unisex student salon wedged between KFC and a fairly sanitary strip joint. Snippy speaks very little English, and me not a word of Dutch, so we get by in broken German. Things go swimmingly with the trim until Snippy turns to me and asks in German if I’ve ever dyed my hair dark. Or so I think. ‘Ja, ja,’ I reply, nodding politely.

Promptly he produces gloves and a thousand bottles of chemicals and rubber busts of female scalps wearing wigs in various shades of very dark brown hair. What the hey, I think to myself. It can’t do any harm.

The dye has only been in my hair for a minute when all at once I feel a terrible burning sensation. It feels like burning, it turns out, because it is burning. The chemicals have had a reaction to my scalp and left me with huge, pussy welts, which I have to endure the pain of while Snippy (who turns out to be an apprentice, at that) finishes colouring the rest of my hair so I don’t have to walk about with zebra stripes as well as looking like a Guy Fawke’s Night victim.

But at least I manage to put my foot down once it’s all over and refuse to pay. This could set a dangerous precedent - next time you don’t want to pay for a service just sustain a small flesh wound in the process. Think of it as collateral damage.