WHEN does planning a hairdressing appointment take longer than three shampoos and a blow dry?

When it involves triple-checking your diary against the phases of the moon.

Not something you practise whenever you’re arranging a trim?

Me neither, but we’re both leaving ourselves open to certain follicle peril.

There are certain days, I have learned, when getting a haircut is “not advisable in any circumstances”.

And it isn’t because your stylist might be suffering from the Monday morning blues or getting giddy with the clippers after a Friday night on the town.

They are no-go dates because of unfortunate planetary alignment, and waxing and waning, ascending and descending moons, or something.

According to In Tune with the Moon, a guide to living and growing in 2010, the days to be avoided next year include January 1 and at least one bank holiday, so it’s not quite as bad as it sounds.

There are optimal days for cutting hair, too.

But I’m not going to tell you when those are because I don’t want all the appointments to get booked up.

I will tell you that if you have a perm (does anyone these days?), it will set more successfully when the moon is waxing but your hair could suffer greater damage in the process.

But you’ll achieve better results if you colour your tresses when the moon is ascending and waxing.

There are good dates (sometimes single afternoons) for encouraging thick and rapid growth and mornings when cutting is best for slowing down hair loss.

There’s even a whole list of individual hours that benefit split ends.

And it’s not just limited to what’s on your head.

There are also categories of fairly good, good and excellent days for tackling your legs and various unspeakable areas.

In Tune with the Moon’s author, the French ex-farmer Michel Gros, advises tackling blackheads when the moon is in the descendant and in an aspect with Venus (still following?) and filing your nails when it’s waning and it’s an earth or air astrological sign.

As this leaves entire months when you shouldn’t take an emery board to your talons, Monsieur Gros must either have very slow-growing fingernails or spend half the year in gloves.

I won’t go into the other remedies for blights and blemishes such as warts, corns and callouses, but suffice to say you’d need an astrological chart and a calendar to tackle any of those little nasties.

How seriously should we take all this?

Michel Gros, whose book also tackles vegetable growing and digestion, claims living by his guidelines can make us healthier and happier.

But it comes at a price.

Not only would we have to suffer chipped nails and tatty hair as we wait for another optimal date to roll around, but we’d also risk becoming a moon phases bore, obsessing about our new regime like people who’ve just started a new diet fad.

There is no way I’m going to start obsessing about planetary interaction. That would be ridiculous.

But, if you’ll excuse me, I’m just off to book up my hair stylist for the next 12 months and to stock up on sprouting beans sown at high tide under a blue moon when Capricorn is being dominated by a fire sign.

READ more of Laura’s columns at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/lauradavis

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