Blog: I’ve had my hair cut.

Now normally I wouldn’t bother to trouble you with such mundane details and my personal vanity – I know you’re a very busy person and you have a lot on your plate (have you finished painting that door yet? Sorry to nag) – but I just wanted to know if you have the same problem that I have with barbers: they all appear to be stone deaf.  Every single man jack of them.

That’s deaf as in mutton jeff. As a post. As mutton jeff as a post. As mutton jeff deaf as a post running around with its hands over its ears shouting ‘I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!’

I’ve never liked having my hair cut. I’ve always found the experience uncomfortable. It’s probably something to do with a childhood fear of the electric clippers (absolutely terrifying when you’re small), but I still go. But I always go to a barber, a proper barber. And I try not to get it cut too short because, as has been pointed out to me, my skull  is exactly the same shape as a potato. As long as they don’t cut it too short – and my usual barber does not – I can disguise this.

But my usual barber is on holiday (again), presumably birding it up in the Caribbean (again), and my hair, which is uncontrollable and curly and ridiculous, was looking slightly more uncontrollable and curly and ridiculous than usual, so I had to go to another barber.

This is a big step. Men are, by nature creatures of habit. If you find a barber who does what you want the chances are your relationship with him will last longer then your marriage and the lives of your children.

So, I sat in the chair, had the cloth draped over me and tucked into my collar and, when he asked me what I wanted, said – quite deliberately – “Just a tidy-up please. A bit off the sides and back and not too much off the top.”

Now, I was specific. Those were my exact instructions. Simple. Direct. Easy to follow.

Which is odd, because he appears to have heard me say, “See that William Hague? That’s the look for me, please.”

And the trouble is, once he’s started, and the room is full of other blokes waiting their turn, you can’t really stop him to complain.

Instead you sit there thinking, ‘That’s too much! That’s too much! Oh please don’t take – Aghhhhh! He’s taken even more off…”

And all the while he’s talking, asking you about your wife, holidays, car etc, but I presume he doesn’t listen to any of the answers; he certainly never listened to what I wanted doing with my hair. The whole point of still having hair at my age is to keep it. I don’t want it all cut off because, one day soon, it won’t be there to cut off – why accelerate nature’s evil grand plan?

So, here we are again. I asked for a trim, but he gave it both barrels with the clippers (I know that metaphor doesn’t entirely work, but you get the idea), and now I’m looking like a Victorian prison inmate.

Presumably, this doesn’t happen at salons. Presumably women go in, hand over an arm and a leg and walk out (or hop, if they’ve handed over the leg) with exactly what they wanted.

Perhaps that’s what I should do next time: dig deep and go to a stylist. She’ll be young and pretty and know exactly what to do with my hair.

But probably still cut it to look like William Hague’s.