Hair today...

I’ve just had my summer haircut. This is essentially a number one (shaver length not the slang noun for having a piss) all over my head and it is one of the best feelings in the world. It’s a real sense of liberation having no or little hair and it has the added bonuses of (a) making me look quite hard and (b) being very low maintenance.

I first had this haircut about seven years ago when in my former life as a thespian I was appearing in a play as a septuagenarian suffering mental illness. And ever since that role my wife has hated this haircut as she claims it makes me look like a rapist or an advert for the Terence Higgins Trust.

But still I love it and to celebrate my lack of hair I also shaved my sideburns off this morning too. These are a relatively recent addition and many folk have passed comment on them as they do border on the largely absurd pork chop variety. But critics of my facial topiary will be gladdened to note that these are now gone for a few days and it’s a sort of new-look me. Well, until I get bored and start growing them back...

One of the best bits about new hair, of course, is getting a haircut. I was a staunch barber man for many years and prided myself on attending a barbershop as it was one of the few remaining bastions of masculinity left.

But two years ago a friend took me on a trip to a place near work entirely staffed by peroxide-haired Eastern European lady hairdressers and I was won over by the prospect of not only having my hair cut by a lady (sort of normal) but also by having it washed by someone else (not very blokey, I know) and then having oil rubbed into my scalp (positively brave new world if you come from Goole).

At first I was convinced the place was really the front for a knocking shop for the Russian Mafia but as I am now a regular I can confirm that I have never once being offered sexual favours of any description there. I do get a tissue when they’re done, though, and in some cultures that could well be a come-on – or something to come on depending on your point of view. But male barbers also offer the tissue and I’ve always assumed they don’t want me to crack one out in their shop so I’ll behave with the same amount of decorum with the peroxide ladies.

This may sound utterly horrible but in more than 30 years of going for haircuts I have never figured out what the obligatory end-of-cut tissue is for. Is it a tradition that all barbers and hairdressers learn at barbering college? Or do they all have shares in Kleenex and this is a fantastic way to ensure sales and shares dividends never drop.

I think we should be told. Because if not maybe my first assumption was correct and it’s something that everybody else does and I’m not in on the gag! And there would be something quite typical about that...