Some things are easier to own up to than others.
Sometime in April 1978, for example, an army recruitment panel, asked me if I had ever tried recreational drugs as part of their process to see if I was suitable material serve Her Majesty.
Of course I had. At Eton in the 1970s, having a joint from time to time was as much part of the uniform as the tail coat and a deep sense of entitlement. Mostly, it was adulterated rubbish from a bearded bloke outside Windsor Riverside Station, but it enabled us to say ‘Man!’ and other sophisticated things, whilst we tried not to cough our guts up over the furniture. I’m neither ashamed of it, or proud of it; it was just something that happened, like gallstones.
After that, I had washed dishes for 5 months in a Swiss hotel, where the trend continued, only this time without the sense of entitlement. The work was brutal, but the weed was rather nearer the real thing.
‘No,’ I lied.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked, his eyes searching mine for hidden depravity.
‘Yes,’ I lied again. And that was that. Off came the hair, on went the hair shirt and in I went for nine years of defending you lot, or your lot’s parents. Please don’t mention it.
I now wish to own up to something else, much more recent. Today, actually.
Having not had a haircut since August last year, I had been persuaded by my family not only to have one, but to rise up from my normal £8.00 plus £1.00 tip effort and go to the salon that my younger son had been to a couple of weeks before. So far, so innocent.
The whole thing was delightful. At first, I have to admit that I was rather taken aback by being asked if I wanted a coffee, and still more so to have my hair cut by a girl in the first time in living memory. Yet more so to be asked how I actually wanted it styled, as if I had a view on the matter, as if I could possibly understand such technical things. Where I normally go, the man runs the clippers over the back of my neck without delay or instruction and we talk about stuff like Free Kurdistan, or the coming olive harvest. Choosing a hair style, like the past, is another country. All we choose there is which day’s copy of the Daily Express to read whilst we are waiting.
‘Just normal,’ I offered weakly. That cut no ice.
‘Long or short?’ she asked, ‘Off the ears or on? Layered or heavy?’
Desperate to say something other than ‘I don’t know; just cut it’, I blurted out the name of the one man that I have always secretly rather fancied looking like, Roberto Mancini.
My hairdresser smiled weakly and went round the back of the studio, presumably to enlist the help of Google images. Shortly after, I heard roaring laughter, and out came the head man, explaining to her in detail, as I thought, how to make me look Italianate and cool. He congratulated me on my choice, thinking himself that we were more in Robert Plant territory.
The fourth new thing experience was to lean backwards into a basin and get a full shampoo and scalp massage. ‘Do you want a bit of dark dye?’ she asked, ‘You know, on the grey bits.’ I told her: ‘No. I still have my dignity.’ Then we shimmered across the floor to the cutting area.
It never occurred to me that someone could spend quite so much time and effort doing something specific to my head, and I can’t pretend I didn’t enjoy it, all the time looking for any Mancini signs emerging from the depleting greyness. Sometimes, I felt that we might be heart-stoppingly close; other times, less so.
And now it is done. I paid my money, thanked the stylist and headed for the deli to get a bit of shortbread as a reward for my bravery.
It’s been a triumph. I got home, and no one noticed that I had even been away, let alone had my hair done.
Apparently, that is the proper sign of a great cut.
‘Well done, Roberto,’ said absolutely no one.
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