Something for the Weekend

Oops, that's the front camera...

Accidental selfie going up Pilsden Pen

Until COVID arrived on the scene I had been in the habit of having a single, annual haircut, generally at the point in late spring when heat, humidity, and the still relatively generous head of hair my genes have bequeathed me started to become an unpleasant combination. In haircut week – which was generally some time around now – I would go from scruffy collar-length to neat above-the-ears in fifteen minutes. So, when COVID caution and the lockdowns began in March 2021 I was already due for that annual haircut. But, hairdressers having been declared a health hazard, I thought, WTF, I'll just let it grow. It would be fun, after all, to compare and contrast the beyond shoulder-length thatch of my youth with whatever my scalp could manage to put forth in my late sixties.

When I was working at the university library there was a hairdressing salon located in the Student Union building, and I would go there for the haircut. It was convenient, obviously, and there was also little alternative: old-fashioned men's barbershops had been vanishing from High Streets everywhere for years. So, having become accustomed to it, since retiring in 2014 I'd walk the pleasant 2.5 miles across Southampton Common to the campus, despite the fact that I'm sufficiently a boy of the "long 1950s" never to feel entirely comfortable in its unisex atmosphere; "unisex" here meaning "a female environment in which men are tolerated". As in all such salons, there were always rather too many mirrors, smells, lifestyle magazines, and haircare "products" for a graceless lump of a straight white male like me to feel at home. The constant pounding club-style music did nothing much for my tinnitus, either.

Oh, dear... They were doing well until the word "perfumery" intruded...

[image from the Advert Museum at historyworld]

In the meantime, though, barbershops for men have been popping up all over the place: there are at least four on our local suburban High Street. "Grooming" seems to have become important again to a lot of young men, although it seems to me that most of these establishments are working with a primped-up notion of "masculinity" that doesn't sit well with the older male. No, I do not want my beard oiled or my moustache waxed, thank you very much, and, no, I don't want my hair gelled, either. What I liked was the old-style barbershop that closed twenty years or more ago where I used to go with my son. It was a step up from a well-run car-maintenance garage in ambience, but only one step: functional, sparse, with tools laid out ready to hand, and reassuringly under-decorated. The elderly barber, George, knew his trade and how to match cut to head, and could read your personality like a psychiatrist. I never had to ask to have a bit more taken off, and the ritual enquiry "Would you like anything on it, sir?" was always a question expecting the answer "No". George's well-honed instincts also told him that I did not require interrogation about my holiday plans, or the prospects of England against Australia in the Ashes. He would work in a deep, austerely contemplative silence, broken only by the snip of scissors and the buzz of the electric trimmer.

When I was a small boy, we used to be despatched to an identical local barber clutching a half-crown coin (that's two shillings and sixpence, which is 12½ "new" pence) with strict instructions to ask for a "short back and sides". We'd sit in a row on a bench, shunting up one until it was your turn (an appointment? What's that?). The barber would place a padded plank across the arms of the chair, sit you on it, pump it up to get you to a convenient height, then drape you in a cloth tucked inside your shirt collar and get to work, usually chatting over his shoulder with someone more interesting than a seven-year-old boy, occasionally interjecting, "Oy, stay still, you, or I'll 'ave yer ear off!". It was oddly disconcerting, getting to stare at yourself in the big mirror over the sink, just a head sticking out of a cone of grey cloth. Back in those days, I imagine those ten minutes getting a trim were the longest most males, young or old, ever spent looking at themselves in a mirror. Doubtless, prolonged eye-contact with oneself does foster uncomfortable introspection: no wonder so many customers preferred to chat about the football. As a distraction I used to study the kit laid out by the sink: the scissors, razors, clippers and trimmers, and the leather strop hanging from a hook like instruments of torture. Which, in a way, they were: I hated getting my hair cut almost as much as, in later years, I hated shaving.

Obviously, in those days there was none of the compensatory "unisex" pleasure of having two young women in intimate contact with one's head – one to wash, one to "style" – something that no longer feels as mildly transgressive as it did at first. In the mind-set of the 1950s, though, that would have been verging on the scandalous: positively Profumo. I imagine there were sleazy joints in Soho where you could pay for that service, plus extras, but the systematic suppression of pretty much all direct expressions of sexuality meant that any physical contact fizzed with erotic charge. Male barbers were adept at avoiding unnecessary touching with their busy hands, and even a casual brush of the fingers when passing change in a shop was tantamount to an indecent proposal, deserving of an apology and carefully avoided. But sex was nonetheless always a silent subtext in the barbershop. Alongside the tubs of Brylcreem, boxes of Durex condoms were openly on display. The barber's famous final question – "Anything for the weekend, sir?" – was the cue to palm a "packet of three" discreetly to the customer.

[image from the Advert Museum at historyworld]

Where I realise I probably differ from those men of old, and most men even today, is in a willingness to be seen with radically different lengths of hair. It's curious how rigidly guys always seem stick to a chosen length and style, which seems an expensively high-maintenance approach to me. I lost the habit of "popping in for a trim" when I let my hair grow to its full natural length after leaving school, and have never regained it. Even before COVID, I enjoyed the shape-shifting effect of gradually changing demographic over the year, at least as seen in others' eyes, like a slow-mo werewolf. 

Your tacit approval or disapproval rating gradually shifts in the months following an annual haircut. You start off neatly barbered, bristly, and a little hyper-masculine. The suit-and-tie crowd acknowledge you, and people call you "sir", without a hint of irony. The edges gradually get knocked off that look, and you become Mr. Windblown-Casual, who lives for the weekend out on his boat, like the guys in the preppy clothes catalogues. Then, somewhere around three quarters of the way through the year, you pass through a barrier of respectability, and find yourself back in the fold with the sub-cultural types. You're suddenly "mate" to everyone again, or even – once you start getting visibly old – "young man" to patronising twerps [1]. I don't know whether my body-language adapts to mirror the hair, but I suspect it may: in the weeks before finally conceding I need to get my hair cut my partner always tells me I have a positively (or perhaps negatively) defiant, two-fingers vibe. After three years of unchecked growth, my hair is almost back at the length of my early twenties, except now completely white and very much thinner, and I suspect she's a little fed up with looking like a probation officer escorting me to an ankle-tag fitting when we're out together. I've had to admit, reluctantly, that it's not a great look any more.

So I finally booked myself in for a haircut on campus, and now, at least temporarily, I'm Mr. Respectable again! Although, in truth, "respectability" is a condition I have never aspired to or attained. I'm just one of those lifelong Pig-Pen guys, happily emitting an irrepressibly scruffy vibe. So, no need to call me "sir", but do watch it with the "young man" bit, mate...

1. I'm an easy-going sort of bloke, but that "young man" business really makes me bristle. Hilariously, I discovered recently that an old friend had been taking this as a compliment on his youthful appearance, rather than the condescending jibe it really is.