This week our curious columnist finds himself overthinking a slightly hairy situation.
Since the dawn of time man has chased the impossible task, the unachievable dream, the endless pursuit. There are some who say it doesn’t even exist, that it’s simply a myth. But still it continues, the quest to find that singular someone, a soul mate, a perfect opposite, that one person who can walk with you hand in hand through life, a hairdresser.
Barnits, doos, quiffs, coiffures, whatever you choose to call it, whether you wear a mop top, mohawk or dare I say mullet, your hair is where you heart is. And you would sooner die then see it on the floor.
It’s a sad unspoken reality that swaths of men, wonder the streets of Britain in pursuit of that ideal somebody to cut their hair, a barber, a stylist, maybe even a cousin who did a course at college. These are men, who perhaps due to conflicts in their homeland or a new job in Milton Keynes, have been separated, having to move on and make a new. There are also those who for reasons probably deep rooted, never made that bond in youth and simply had to do with out, passing from barber to barber, always the new client, never getting on a first name basis, never being able to truly articulate that they just want a bit of the top.
This whole grizzly thought came up because I was getting a little grizzly. The issue being my hair was going beyond Jared Leto locks and into Janis Joplin territory. Now, I’ve always been a close-cropped kid, short back and sides. But I am going through a period of transition, a renaissance, becoming a modern day Caravaggio, minus the drunken outburst and swordfights, well, minus the sword fighting anyway.
But of course the better half took my decision to join the bro flow fraternity (patent pending) negatively, preferring more military then man-mane and demanded that if I’m going to grow my hair that I NEED to get it ‘styled’, and suggested her own dear hairdresser, to which I declined. For I would find my own, and it had nothing to do with the price, or the cost or how much money I would have to cough up, so don’t bring it up.
The problem was I didn’t have a hairdresser to call my own. I was barber-less. Yeah sure there had been a few in the past, you might even say I’d been around, and you wouldn’t be wrong. In fact there isn’t a demographic that hasn’t taken a pair of scissors to my hair, old, young, male, female, Turkish, Greek. Even mothers, well mother, my own obviously and far more then once and it didn’t end well.
And so we end where we began, walking the cold cobbled streets, hair over grown and hidden beneath a cap. Questioning the entire belief that a man should find his destiny, that there is a swivelling chair with his name on. Slowly loosing the long held dream he won’t be asked about his coming holidays in mid November, or be mocked for his weak facial hair. Would it be so bad if you got the haircut you asked for, that they wouldn’t mention the shape of your head or cut your side burns different lengths. Maybe you really do get what you pay for and without releasing I found myself outside the very hairdresser I had been recommended. It must have been destiny and perhaps, inside, my hairdresser was waiting. The room was bright and smelt clean and welcoming, the woman behind a desk flashed a friendly smile, I turned to take in the room. I saw a sign.
£35.00! I’ll do it myself.
I would like to make it clear, before the PC brigade raid my house, kidnap me and shave me clean forehead to…foramen magnum. I have the fullest of respect for the follicly challenged and have great admiration for their proud history and culture. In fact one of my close friends is bald.
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