HAIR TODAY....

A report published by Fudge, the makers of `hair products` suggests that men have to wait until they are 32 before finally settling on a particular hair style having tried at least five different styles before `settling down.`   Women on the other hand try as many as seven styles before they finally arrive at one they like and stick to.

Well, they never included me in their `research,` for had they done so they would have encountered a wholly different approach to hair styling.  You see, I didn`t get off to a very good start, being as bald as a coot until I was three, then producing a shock of blonde locks that lasted until the trauma of starting school when I was five.   Hair-wise, my school days were spent between the rigid conformity and the economic necessity of short back and sides and the onset of adolescence at which point I experimented with assorted `styles` (I use the term loosely) which involved copious amounts of Brylcreem. 

In my mid and late teens, however, I found myself in the grip of the one and only local barber, one Sweeney Furminger by name, who in his smoke filled emporium would ignore any individual preferences and simply produce the same `style` for each and every one of his victim customers.   He had a captive audience - no local competition - and ran his regime with unfailing consistency, which at least meant that the hair `styles` sported by  all the local lads were identical, leaving the local girls to look for other features to admire or otherwise.  I was still a slave to Brylcreem, however, chiefly purchased as a desperate response to Sweeney`s insistent questioning as to whether I would like something for the weekend, Sir.....ah, such sweet innocence.

Things got no better when I was conscripted into Her Majesty`s National Service and on my first day at Catterick Camp in North Yorkshire I, along with the rest of Intake 60/02, were ceremoniously shorn of any pretences to `style` we might have had.   Not much change from Sweeney really, although the military experience was more reminiscent of sheep shearing than haircutting, whilst Brylcreem became something of a banned substance, presumably prejudicial to good order and military discipline.

Throughout a busy and demanding professional life, I only really ever managed to get a haircut when necessity demanded, rather than any planned approach to improving my image, but at least I was able to have my irregular visits to various barbers during working hours, having invoked the principle that, as my hair grew in working hours, it seemed only fair for it to be `seen to` in working hours too.

And it has only been in my retirement that I have discovered the joys and benefits of being `seen to` very regularly by my adopted stylist, Chris of Larkfield, who does what she can with my thinning, greying, reluctant wisps.   They`re not used to all the attention, of course, and at this stage of life any thoughts of changing styles are but delusions.  So I never really had a chance to try out the five styles reported by Fudge and it`s all too late now anyway.   Pity really, I might have been quite stylish given half a chance.