Had a haircut?

These lockdowns here in the UK have not been kind to me and not for the reasons that you might be thinking of. Going to the pub and meeting friends have been a no go on and off for far too long but this is nothing in comparison to that has been bothering me, the unwieldly mop of hair which has endlessly sprouted out of my brain holder. I have never been one of those guys that has to have that “fresh trim” and if a single hair is out of place it will ruin my day but bloody hell I need this hair cut off!

When I need a haircut its normally triggered because somebody else has made a comment along the lines of “oh your hair has got a bit long” to which my reply is a combination of awkwardness and self-realisation that I look like a cross between a Cousin It from the Addams Family and that fluff you find in your tumble dryers door. You must agree a fetching look.

Now as I mentioned before because of the lockdowns all forms of haircutting professionals establishments have been closed from your hairdressers to your barbers no hair cutting has been happening, not a single scissor has been snipped! What rubs salt in to my wounds is that every time I have needed to get a bloody hair cut our good old Prime Minster bumbles on the TV screen to say everything if locked down again just because Mr Man-Of-The-Internet needs and haircut and it is in the best interest of the country to close everything down making my life a hairy misery so the resy of the country can mock me on Zoom…

After the latest lock down ended and we started to go closer to “normal” life I booked my slot in right away in fact I even booked a half day off at work to make sure I could get there and not miss it. In under half an hour later with my head feeling much colder and a pile of hair on the floor which resembles a medium sized fluffy dog I left to head back to and afternoons work at the office. Upon returning, I remembered why I hate so much haircuts!

“Have you had your haircut” was the first thing said to me as I walked in reception, my response “oh … errm … yeah” and carried on walking to my office slightly stunned from being challenged at the door with a question rather than the normal “hello”. While it might seem to be a nice way to start a conversation and some of you might be thinking why is he being such a grumpy arsehole they are just trying to be nice what’s your problem, well the same question was asked a further three times navigating the corridors and stairwells, this didn’t help with adding to my hatred of small talk and pointless conversations.

Well, thinking about it, maybe I am the arsehole, so rather than continuing in to become a grumpy old man before my time I tried another approach… come up with random crap to say back which is utterly confusing and try not to laugh!

I firstly started by just denying the completely obvious fact that I have a lack of hair. At the very beginning it works really well, the questioner it kind of left in a state of confusion and bamboozlement if you just carry on with whatever you are doing its pretty damn effective. I rate this my favourite but you really have to keep your composure and not let yourself slip in to laughter!

Another option I tried was coming up with total nonsense some with you can try yourself too.  “No, I just lowered my ears” and “No, I just pulled the other end from the inside” these also work pretty quickly to stop that stupid comment form going any further, I do get a fair few puzzled looks normally followed by “Oh, OK” and them thinking that you have completely lost the plot.

My final and what I feel is the most satisfying is to simply repeat the question back to them, if you are feeling fancy change the order a little bit. So if you are asked something like, “have you had a haircut” reply back “oh yes YOU have had a haircut”, not only does this change the topic of conversation from you it stop them dead in their tracks if you repeat the question in the odd silence while their brains try and figure out what has just happened. Feel free to then interject with a confused expression as if they are the odd one and say something like “anyway, did you catch what Dave from marketing said in the last meeting?” or something to that nature!

If you are one of those eagle-eyed haircut spotters do us all a favour say something like “nice haircut” and leave it at that.

Wait hang on a moment, nobody has ever said that to my before! Are my haircuts really that bad… oh for fuck sake…