Shave and a Haircut. (Well, not the shave)

I went to get my hair cut this week and if I say so myself, it came out not too bad. Certainly better than some I’ve had in the past.

I’ve been growing my hair a little longer recently but after several months of constantly pushing it away from my face, came to the reluctant conclusion that it’s really too fine and wispy for such a style. As the weather is warming up now I decided it would be best to go a little shorter.

While it may be floppy, my hair is still somewhat willful and I rarely have any real control over the style it will choose for itself. Sometimes the parting is on the right, sometimes on the left, occasionally diagonally across my head. I never really know for sure until mid morning. I’m fortunate however, in that I’ve recently discovered a more than competent stylist who does a splendid job of bringing order to where once there was chaos. She’s also a very pleasant person so haircuts these days are no longer the torment they were in my younger days.

The first week of the school holidays my Dad would drag me along to the local butcher, uhm barber for the regulation crew cut. It was always a crew cut which was just as well because the old men who ran these places didn’t know how to cut hair any other way. A fitted plank would be placed across the arms of the chair, up I would be hoisted and the battle commenced. Even though I knew how things would end up, I always tried my best to influence matters.

"Just a little off the top, leave the length at the back and sweep it down over my ears to the collar" I would say. The barber would glance over at my Dad who would give a curt nod.

"Skin him."

And that was that. Out came the clippers and in no time the air was filled with the smell of hot metal and clouds of my hair which gradually settled in piles on the linoleum floor. I walked out with my head gleaming white like an ice cream in the sunshine and raced home determined to hide under the bed until my hair had grown again. Crew cuts might be stylish now, but they weren’t in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, let me tell you. I needn’t have worried because every other kid in town had gone through the same ordeal. There were only a few barbers in town you see and they all trained at the same school.

However, if an annual head shave was bad it was nothing to the torment of my early teen years when my dear old Ma, bless her, decided she could save a few pennies by allowing anyone who could hold a pair of scissors to have a go at my hair. My high school age sister got a Saturday job sweeping the floor at one of the ladies’ hair salons so that qualified her as a stylist in Mum’s book. Except of course, she hadn’t the faintest idea how to cut hair which meant the whole ordeal lasted for hours and left me walking around looking like I’d just got off the short bus.

Even so, I forgave my sister everything after the time Aunt Margaret came to visit and Ma talked her into giving me a quick trim. Aunt Margaret isn’t really my Aunt, just a friend of my mother’s and she’s a lovely woman. However, she’s not coming near my head with a pair of scissors again. Not as long as I can still swing a punch she’s not. I didn’t think it was too bad while it was happening; she certainly sounded like she knew what she was doing as she snipped away and she was after all, the mother of a professional hairdresser so how bad could it be? Very bad apparently. That was the one and only time my mother conceded the point and gave me the money to have a professional repair it as best he could.

Even when I was a working man and flush with cash; it was a challenge to find a barber who would cut my hair in a style that didn’t add 70 years to my age. I lived in a small north of England town and fashion arrived slowly. Fortunately by the mid ’80s it became socially acceptable for men to frequent ladies’ hair salons and while the amount of cash I forked over for a trim made my Dad laugh out loud, I was at least able to walk around without looking like him.

Even so, a haircut was still often fraught with challenge. One time my regular girl was on vacation so I was saddled with her very chirpy but exceedingly young replacement.

"Do you know what number razor she uses for you?" She twittered.

"Certainly do," I replied. "A ‘number two’ on the back and sides."

"Are you sure?" she queried "That’s awfully short."

"Yes, I’m sure. But just on the back and the sides."

She wasn’t convinced. "A number two razor is really short. Are you sure that’s what you want?"

I should have recognized the danger signs but I pressed on. "Yes, I’m sure. But you do understand I just mean at the back and sides, not all over?"

We bantered back and forth, while she tried to convince me that this would be very short and I tried to convince her, that it was OK, because I just meant the back and sides. Eventually I won the argument and she set to work with the razor. It was then we learned that while I had been expecting her to trim the back and sides, she thought I was asking her to shave the entire back and sides of my head. By the time we realized our misunderstanding, the damage was done and she had no choice but continue the job all the way around.

For the next month I looked like a mushroom. And I'm told that's not a good look for me.