The Future: Cutting Your Own Hair

Most habits from my student days I've managed to get over. I no longer idolise the shitty detective programmes shown by the BBC at lunch times, like Quincy and Bergerac. I no longer buy Safeway Saver's Coke - which can only be a good thing, as it looked like sludge water dredged from a ditch somewhere. It also tasted like sludge water, dredged from a ditch somewhere - albeit with added sweetners. I don't wear military style clothing in the hope that I look cool - or failing that, like a former member of Echo and the Bunnymen. Let's face it, there is nothing wrong with leaving most of you student habits behind. A failure to do this will make you maladjusted as you go grow old. Or, even worse, it will make you join the Liberal Democrats.

However, one habit I haven't managed to get out of is cutting my own hair. Even now, working for a FTSE 250 company in Central London on a not too bad (although not too great either) salary, I still cut my own hair. Which a lot of people find strange, but actually makes perfect sense to me.

Cutting my own hair was a neccessity when I was at uni. At the college bar, a pint cost £1. A hair cut cost £10. Therefore, getting my hair cut professionally would cost me two quiet nights out or one big night out. Never, ever going to happen.

After leaving uni, I tried these fancy barber people, who seem to be able to charge a small fortune for doing what I could do in my room in college for free. And, without exception, it went wrong. The barbers I visited seemed utterly unable to understand the simple instruction of "I want the same style of hair, but shorter". They seemed to interpret it as "gimme a crew cut". I would end up looking like a refugee from the Marines. And the Marines look really isn't me.

Things reached crisis point when I went to a new barber. He got out his clippers, and started cutting my hair right at the top of my forehead. A great big wodge of hair fell into my lap. Now, I had quite long hair at the time, but I knew it wasn't long enough to allow for the amount of hair that had just fallen into my lap. I asked him, feeling slightly panicked, to check the grading on his clippers. He reassured me that everything was ok. And another lump of my hair fell from my head. This time I demanded that his check the grading on his clippers. He did. And fell into an awkward silence.

His manager explained to me what had happened. It was an intricate story, and a deeply unconvincing story. I can summarise, once you cut through all the "fucking bullshit" in the following way - the barber fucked up. And since he started at the very top of my head, the rest of the hair had to come off to prevent me from walking from the barber's shop with a hillbilly mullet. I was enraged - and looked it too, because the lack of hair made me look like an angry bouncer. I was even more enraged when they demanded a fee for practically scalping me. I not only told them to go and fuck themselves, but also how to do it in a reasonable amount of detail.

Since then, I have always cut my own hair. And you know what, it works. It is free. I can get my hair cut when I want. And it happens in the (relative) comfort of my own home. Sure, it took a while to fully work out the best ways to cut my own hair. But now I know them, it is a quick and easy operation. And if the barber fucks up, it is me fucking up. And I can be very forgiving. Of myself anyway.

So I reckon cutting your own hair is the way forward. Although I will accept not responsibility whatsoever if any reader of this blog tries it and it doesn't go well...