I LIKE TO GIVE MYSELF A CLIP ROUND THE EARS

Rab’s been taking responsibility for his own haircut, and finds you need eyes in the back of your head, patience, and a liking for a certain Norwegian pop singer...

So we need to talk about my heid. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, at least not on the outside.

That’s because I cut my own hair and have done so

for seven or eight years. I’m reminded of this important fact after an urgent report in the papers about women making 500-mile round trips to their favourite hairdresser after they’ve moved house.

I suppose there are trust and habit issues here. This operative has cut your hair before, and knows what you like. Perhaps their conversation is even interesting, though I find that unlikely.

Now that we’re privy to folks’ innermost thoughts online, we discover that many decent ratepayers deplore

the experience of going to the hair economist’s salon and staring back at their reflection in an unforgiving mirror that amplifies the terror and foreboding in their eyes as this dentist of the follicles looms over them with instruments seemingly designed for torture.

Then there’s the money. When I started cutting my

own hair, I saved eight quid every two months. I’ve heard some people pay even more than that.

I do my hair with an upside down beard trimmer. The back of my bonce is

just blootered blindly, so it’s arguably unsurprising that it looks, er, different to the top and sides.

Any longer and it might be considered a mullet, but I don’t let it grow too far, periodically gathering it in a bunch and snipping off the excess with nail scissors (because that’s all there is in the bathroom cabinet).

That operation isn’t easy. Again it’s blind and rather awkward.

Time after time, I snip at fresh air. Or I get just a bit, making the back look lopsided.

That saying about needing eyes in the back of your head is never more apposite than when cutting your own hair.

On the top part of my noggin, after the follicular butchery, I bung on a small vat of gel (my barnet is too bouncy and bouffant otherwise) and brush it back, which conceals a multitude of tonsorial sins. When a small area of my mane gets unruly or sticks oot, usually around the top of the ears, I simply cut that bit off with

the nail scissors.

You gasp in horror, but wonderful Norwegian singer Aurora has one of indie pop’s most admired hairstyles, and she does it herself with kitchen scissors.

All that said, there are some things I miss about the barber’s (I’d earlier stopped going to unisex “hairdresser” on account of the cost, my failure to grasp the terminology, and embarrassing incidents such as bunging my bonce into the sink the wrong way).

I miss the exotic aromas, the peculiar publications

I’d never normally read, the pop tunes on the radio, the massage aspect. And, to be fair, the lads I saw latterly were always a good laugh on the conversation front.

But, ultimately, I now take responsibility for my own mop. No one else to blame

when it goes wrong, though most often I’m happy with it, which I rarely was after the barber’s. Somehow, they just never got it quite the way I’d envisaged. “I asked for a Brad Pitt and you’ve given me a Donald Trump!” Never again.

WHEN I STARTED CUTTING MY OWN HAIR, I SAVED EIGHT QUID EVERY TWO MONTHS

HAIR WE GO: Rab finds an upside down beard trimmer is ideal for cutting his barnet, and nail scissors come in handy, too.