‘AFTER 15 MINUTES, I IMPLORED HER TO PUT THE CLIPPERS DOWN…’
The online tutorial called “How to Cut Men’s Hair” should have sufficed. My wife, however, has little patience when it comes to instructions. Tantalisingly, she also had me, her guinea pig, in the chair and desperate for a trim. It was lockdown last year and things were getting hairy.
Unevenly hairy, I should add. Thanks to male-pattern baldness, my hair is thicker around the sides, thin on top. The money I’ve spent on haircare has increased conversely to the spread of the balding pate on my crown. Before Covid came along, I was employing the services of the world’s oldest and most esteemed barber shop, Truefitt & Hill in Mayfair, every six weeks. I buy hair tonic and pomade, too.
Friends and family laugh. But for me it is a matter of conservation. The scarcer something becomes, the more valuable it is.
So it took a leap of faith to entrust my locks to Stephanie, my wife. She, more than anyone, knows the Samsonian relationship I have with those thin wisps.
I invested in professional clippers and scissors for the job – though I may as well have handed her a scalpel. Stephanie was bullish.
Screw the Youtube demonstration, she could execute a nearperfect pompadour without it, thanks very much. I don’t know where her optimism came from, but it was certainly blind. Within 15 minutes of ham-fisted clippering, I became the owner of a lopsided mullet, fashioned around a barren central tonsure.
“It’s fine. I can sort this out,” Stephanie insisted, as she set about “blending in” the mishmash, laughing maniacally. I implored her to stop. Finally, I had to utter the words I most dreaded: “Just shave the whole lot off.”
This lockdown, the thorny issue of a home haircut arose again. Stephanie assured me last year’s massacre was a mere blip. But, plead as she might, her scissors are not allowed near my hallowed ground. I will not be hoodwinked again.