Sunday 1 June 2014

Had a haircut and shaved the beard off in the last couple of days, and it feels like I've lost something roughly the weight of my own head. When the beard first started growing, back in January, it was mainly down to laziness, but then I got a part in a play in which the beard seemed to quite suit, so I kept it for that. And while enough people seemed to like it, there came a time that I was pretty keen to be rid of it, particularly as I was beginning to look like Serpico by way of Jesus (the Robert Powell version, obviously, not one that actually existed). 

And now it's gone, and I look concenviably younger. Only by about three months, but hell, I'll take what I can get. It's a good enough novelty while it lasts. The thing is, I'm not usually one of these people who gets their hair cut on even a semi-regular basis. (and yes, I realise while typing that last sentence that I could simply have replaced the phrase 'one of those people' with the shorter, and more accurate, 'people'. I'm pretty sure that there have been years when I've only had to cut it once. Not such a big deal when you're bass guitar in that band in your local pub that's definitely gonna make it any day now. Really, I've never really cared about what hairstyle I'm styling. People who have known me a while will be able to readily vouch for this. Cut, grow shoulder length, cut, repeat. 

But this time, it - along with the beard - had got so long - not really all that long, in the world of long beards (can you imagine such a world?), but long enough that any hairdresser wouldn't neccessarily know what it was that I wanted, particularly as my conversational skills with hairdressers tend to not get any more detailed than 'Just a bit of a cut'. This is an opening line that's served me well since about the age of eight, although addmitedly not one that you want to be misheard if you're in Croydon and the other person has easy access to a razor.  

Because that wouldn't be quite enough this time around, I did something that I've never done before, which was to bring along a photograph of the sort of style I thought I wanted. Of course, it wasn't a photograph at all, but an image on my mobile phone. This didn't stop me feeling slightly foolish as I showed it to the hairdresser. I wanted to be very clear that I wasn't expecting or even hoping to look like the guy in the picture, who was all pretty-boy-pouty-lips and airbrushed cheekbones. I think most hairdressers know this already, but mild paranoia had set in: I half expected him to do a double take between me and my proffered mobile, and fight hard to contain his hysteria. That, and beckon a couple of his work colleagues over so that they could join in their derision. None of that happened, of course.  He just nodded, looked entirely unimpressed, and got to work. Six months of hair were clipped into a reasonably innoffensive (and a helluva lot lighter) style in under twenty minutes. OK, so I had previously been waiting there for about half a hour, but that's hardly the point. 

Maybe it's just the change in hair, the change in weather and the change in month (hello, summer), but I'm currently feeling infused (and enthused, I guess) with all manner of upcoming projects. There's a couple of performances coming up next month, plus a full length script to get done in roughly the same time. Plus, I worked out this week that some of the writing projects I've got going on will take me - and this is if I'm working non-stop, along with everything else I've got going on - til at least 2020. That's two leap years away. On the bright side, I will have probably had a haircut again by then.