a child molester or a mental patient.

Hair cuts…

Since an early age I’ve always hated having my ears lowered, however the trimming of one’s Barnet can often cause tremendous relief and re-acquaintance with hidden parts of one’s face. For instance, since having my haircut a lot shorter than it had been for many months, I realised that a) I’m showing more scalp than I recall and b) that my neck, alas, requires strimming on a more regular basis than I had appreciated. The blessed relief however on a hot day or more notably in the preparations one makes before leaving the house, out ways the little faults I find on my poor head.

Bad hair causes stress and worry, which I believe will ultimately be the root cause of the early stage of male pattern baldness, which if my ill thought out ethos is true means I’m screwed. Therefore I should grow my hair whilst I still have the chance. Of course growing your hair, as I’m more than sure you know already, means that you must under go many awkward stages of growth and the increase of bad hair anxiety (and therefore more hair loss). For many years I held my barber- Nathan Grassam of Crab lane in Harrogate to blame for my shoddy appearance, however after since trying many other barbers and now hairdressers (much to the shock of my father) I’ve come to realise that you can’t polish a turd and at least I’m at peace with this-that’s not to say I’m particularly happy about it.

The only way forward would seem to be keeping your fairly short at all times. In my case as I’m on the steady road to becoming a portly gentleman the short hair would only make me resemble a Phil Mitchell style bruiser. Also the V shaped scar just inside of my hairline (accrued when as a young toddler when I mistakenly ran into a coffee table) and the broken front tooth would further a thuggish image that I am so desperate to avoid. Also as a proud beard wearer, the beard but no hair look is also one, which I would hope to avoid. Sadly, as I’m a glasses wearer too (Jeez- it just get worse doesn’t it), I’m not meant to wear hats either. Despite many attempts to hide bad hair underneath a generic hat of sorts, have resulted in many ill thought out look-a-likes such as Michael bleedin’ Moore and Steven bleedin’ Spielberg. My black ‘Wayne’s World Hat’ provided much bad hair relief when I was sixteen- this look was aided by my under-cut hairstyle that was all the rage at the time but a twenty-nine year old, bearded fella with these glasses cannot sport a backwards Wayne’s World cap without either looking like a child molester or a mental patient.

Thus far in life, I’ve been plagued with bad hair, starting in my youth when I was a fully-fledged member of the ‘Gingers’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair

No doubt a cheap psychiatrist will one day sit crossed legged and listen to me patiently whilst I spew a thousand tales of woe regarding the prejudice of my hair colouring, offering me simple yet vague advise about coming to terms with my anxiety and no doubt after several sessions with this quack, I’ll reach an epiphany that in fact psychiatry would not help me resolve these issues and in a moment of rage and joy, I’d confront the be-spectacled shrink about his lack of professionalism, and no doubt be called a “ginger tosser” in response. Most likely this will cause a wave of nausea and depression and I shall be forced to find another doctor to get over the jibe, however because the new psychiatrist will be more expensive I shall become destitute and bald. (Note to self: don’t go to a psychiatrist as it will result in the speeding up of one’s hair loss and lower my self-esteem). As luck would have it, in the latter part of my teenage years, my hair progressively got darker, so much so, that when I started University here in Liverpool, a friend tried to phone me on the communal hall of residence telephone. The buffoon mistakenly asked to speak to “Macca” a moniker which I was known as whilst at school (no one was called by their first name), but when I moved out of that damned one horse town I declined to inform any of my would-be acquaintances of this childish nickname. Anyway, Laura Shep who answered the phone knew not of the aforementioned “Macca”. Increasingly frustrated, my friend gave my full name, and after this avenue of investigation drew no satisfactory results (Laura at this stage was unaware of my full name- knowing me only as Matt) gave a description of me which went roughly similar to:

“Short, scruffy, ginger hair and wears trousers with paint on them”

After careful thought, Laura apologised and said that she didn’t know who this person was and terminated the call.

During this exchange I was sat in the communal TV room no doubt watching something dour that mid evening 1996 BBC would have to offer (probably ‘Sliders’ or the impossibly shite ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ or ‘So Haunt me’*), when Laura walked in shaking her head. “What’s happened” a curious student asked her and she said “who’s Matthew McPartlan?”
“Ahhhggggg!” I exclaimed in disgust “Me!!!!!”

Laura put her hands over her mouth with embarrassment and shrieked “…but you don’t have ginger hair!”

This was one of the sweetest moments in my life. Looking back on it now, I note that she didn’t disagree with the “short” and “scruffy” elements of his description.

Anyway, going back to the original line of thought of this here ramble-(and as I recall this isn’t the first time my poor quality hair styling has been the subject matter of my un-happiness) I don’t fear baldness I just don’t look forward to the process of going bald and having to shave my fine beard off (I wouldn’t wish to resemble Mike Love of the beach boys). I would like to think that I would go to sleep one night and awaken bald with a mount of my non-ginger hair on my pillow. I can only imagine with horror the pain of slowly watching your hairline disappear slowly over the years would be similar to the breaking of one’s voice. Slow, uncomfortable and embarrassing- yet unavoidabley. So for the time being I plan to rejoice and bask in the light of scruffy, shaggy and sadly bad, hair!

Coming soon “Body hair- the beast within”


*Does anyone else remember this program? Weak plot about an elderly Jewish woman who haunts her old house, which is now occupied by a 2.4children English family where all the members suffer from the implausible Eastenders/Hollyokes syndrome where they all have different regional accents (Cockney, Manc, Posh southern English –possibly from Northampton or Brighton) The mum was Raquel from ‘Only Fools & Horses’ and the father was Bob from ‘Rita, Sue and Bob too’. A spectacularly bad programme, especially as the poor old Dad was the only member of the family who couldn’t see or hear the eccentric Ghost (Oye Vay!)