HERR KUTZ

One day all of your past haircuts (or lack of them)
will catch up with you

There was a time in my life, not too many years ago really, when I used to potter my way through this life with my hair tumbling in, well, if not exactly pre-Raphaelite curls exactly, then in sufficient enough quantities to cause the occasional five year old to sneak up behind me as I strolled along minding my own business and whisper a fearful insult of “Hippy!” before bounding away giggling with his chum.

Months would go by without me feeling the need for a trim, which was, I suspect much more to do with laziness than any sartorial choices I might have been making, and then, one day, I would suddenly see myself in a mirror and think “Oh my God!” and make a hasty appointment at whatever haircutting emporium I would let get their hands on me and they would fetch out the heavy duty hedge clippers from the equipment room and begin hacking away. Shortly afterwards, I would then depart feeling and looking “Much better!” and resume the whole sorry cycle once more, although I did always enjoy those few moments of anonymity when nobody could recognize me once my distinctive look had been hacked off and flung to the floor to be swept up by the latest trainee and, for all I know, quite possibly sent off to make cushions in Afghanistan. Within minutes, this new look would then appear to be perfectly normal to everyone and it would be images taken possibly only the day before that would suddenly appear strange to everyone.

For many years this lifestyle of extremes of appearance was the easiest option and kept me out of the hands of the dreaded hairdressers as much as possible, and this pattern would continue as my recently sueded head would sprout and begin rebuilding itself back towards a state of lengthy and unruly curls, usually going through a dangerous phase which I always used to term the “Sydney Opera House” effect which sometimes took me back to the trimmers in self-disgust att my appearance if I could actually be bothered to be bothered by it, but more often than not I grew out of it.

Curliness of hair is, of course, the curse put upon those who desire straight hair and is exactly the opposite curse to that inflicted upon those with the kind of straight hair who so desperately desire a natural curl to it. What strange creatures we humans are.

Happily my hairline, whilst heading north at an alarming rate in recent years, has managed to at least remain on the front part of my head, even if the phenomenon of so-called “male pattern baldness” is being visited upon me, it does at least seem to have been held up by the uncertain train timetable of destiny, and I have also been lucky enough to remain relatively hirsute at the back of the noggin and thus far (although I’m obviously tempting fate here) avoided the worst excesses of what a former colleague used to refer to as the “Chimp’s Arse” effect. Whilst I’m still absolutely certain that that particular delight still lies ahead of me, for now I must be grateful that I have remained fairly immune to that particular insult thus far, and I seem to be one of those lucky fellows whose hair is choosing to cling on to my head in desperation rather than let go to gravity and fall into plug hole oblivion as the years have ticked by.

There’s still time for it to disappear though, and I’ve often wondered whether I’m brave enough to consider going down the completely shaven-headed route and present the world with the “full potato” look or whether I’m much too lazy for that and will end up becoming a complete “Charlton” or, as my fellow students might remember a proper “Terry”.

Someone once told me that they suspected that there must be something preservative in the “Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll” lifestyle because all those heaviest of rockers all seemed to have such impressive heads of hair at such great ages, although it does little to explain my own still verdant topping as all three of those particular lifestyle choices have always been, to me at least, things that mostly happen to other people. Anyway, it turns out that for every full head of aging rock and roll hair, there’s a balding one standing next to it reflecting spotlights onto the audience, and some of the more deviant have even owned up to syrupticious wiggery in recent times.

The problem was that, despite my general look, I was never particularly bohemian in lifestyle choice, nor was I particularly grungy in thought and word and deed either, unlike the many who do seem to manage to carry off such a sartorial decision with the kind of confidence that it looks as if they actually mean it, but just generally not being hugely concerned by such trivial matters as personal appearance did rather mean that people, rather like that brave little five-year-old I mentioned earlier, did leap to conclusions about me which were either patently untrue or did me no favours as I tried to wend my own unique way through this vale of tears.

Whenever I ponder on my lack of success in the charm stakes during the nervous Nineties I do begin to wonder whether looking like the Yeti’s scruffier brother might have been a factor in my general lack of social success. I’ve recently rediscovered various long-buried snapshots taken during those lean years and wonder quite what level of depths I had descended unto and quite what the scruffy Herbert I appeared to be was trying to tell the passing world as it judged me on my appearance.

There were always excuses for avoiding a regular trim, of course. There always are. I could blame a lack of financial stability which meant that I couldn’t afford such expensive treats as proper hairdressing, although, to be honest, my occasional ventures into the more “blokey” environments of old-fashioned barber’s shops whilst cheap, were never that successful, as my lack of knowledge about such things as footballing tended to make the whole experience rather awkward for everyone involved. I might sometimes also blame the lack of an available haircutting emporium that was open at a time I could actually get to it back in the days when the local ones always seemed to work from 9.00 to 5.00 and be fully booked on Saturdays

Mind you, such things were never a priority for me personally anyway, and so I do still wonder about the vast prices that some of them charge for a process that I still equate with cutting my toenails but which a lot of people seem to waste considerable chunks of their income on.

These days, of course, my own routine is much improved. I have, for the last few years, found a snipping shop which remains open late enough for me to get to it after my work for the day is over, and I have also managed to get them, in that manner so beloved of my dental surgeon, to allow me to make long-term appointments which I will actually attempt to actually attend on the understanding that I really will make the effort to go to something that is written in my diary instead of just letting the weeks, months and years slip away with no action being taken. This means that I remain at least “almost presentable” and “human again” for most of the time nowadays, which I suppose to be progress of a sort.

It is all rather strange though, because I did manage to get these things done with much more enthusiasm when I was younger. “Shapers” was the establishment I albeit infrequently attended as a youngster once my father had finally abandoned his home hairdressing technique of sitting me in a kitchen chair on a Saturday morning and attacking my head with the latest miracle device he’d bought from Ronco. I even managed to go for more regular haircuts as a student, and the memories of the upstairs room of an ordinary house on a housing estate in South Wales are suddenly flooding back…

That rather mundane, cosy little business now seems far removed from the highly marketed hairdressing world we now seem to live in where there are more salons than shops on the average high street, and there sometimes seem to be more of them in one quarter mile than could possibly be financed by the surrounding population. However, we all do have hair, and much of it still grows every day, so perhaps I’m wrong about that.

Hairdressing salon names always seem to be trying to hard to be either quite zany (like “Kutz” or “Snipz” which are unlikely, but not impossible, to be the actual names of the proprietors) or terribly, terribly formal (“Salon de Brian”), although there does seem to be quite a propensity for using first names with only the initial of the family name following it. That is if it is a suitably “sexy” initial, that is. Somehow the letter “H” doesn’t seem to, if you’ll pardon the pun, cut it. My all-time favourite name for a hairdressing salon still has to be the one I used to see as I meandered around Bristol. It was called “Bottoms Up” which always conjured up rather hilarious images of the kind of intimate tonsuring that has since, I’m told, become rather de rigeur amongst some of the population, but back then, the idea of a row of people sitting with their bums in the air waiting for a trim just used to tickle me.

Nowadays the only thing that tickles me about hairdressing is when some of the trimmings fall down inside my shirt collar, but I suppose, like taxes, haircuts remain an inevitability, if one only reluctantly tolerated.