Fordyce Maxwell: 'We took our seat with the same reluctance as sheep being hauled from a pen'

Published on Saturday 2 May 2009 19:38

I HAD the first haircut of spring last week, resisting as always – to the relief of all who have to look at me from any angle – the modern temptation to have shaved what a colleague with an ethnographic bent once described as "a typical example of a Scandinavian-descent ba'heid".

But by background and inclination, with a few blips, I've always been only one remove from that – a "Yes, the defence was rubbish. Yes, with this lot in charge it's only a matter of time before they make it compulsory. No, I haven't been on holiday. Yes, we'll pay for this good weather. No dressing thanks. Yes, that looks fine. Keep the change" short, back and sides man.

For the first 15 years or so of life there were no blips and little conversation as my father cut his growing family's hair every few weeks in the farm kitchen, using much the same technique on nine of us as he used for shearing.

I thought a lot of my father in many ways, and still do, but how he cut hair was not one of them. We took our seat – facing the back of a chair, old towel round our neck – with the same reluctance as sheep being hauled from a pen.

In early eye-watering days, he used hand-powered clippers which occasionally jammed. Un-jamming removed tufts of hair by the roots and any conversation was along the lines of "Ouch!", "Sit still", "It hurts", "It won't if you don't move your head." Questionable logic, but he had the clippers and, in extremis, his other hand held us firmly by the neck.

The introduction of electric clippers was an improvement, although they too could jam and tug, with the added disadvantage that a wrong stroke could be made more quickly and travel further.

Allied to the trouble he had in equalising hair length above the ears no matter how hard he tried – "That's it, level. Nearly. There, that's it. No, I'm damned if it is. There. Well, I'll…" – my formative-years hairstyle usually resembled a coconut.

As long as my main concerns were to get into the fresh air, preferably with a football or cricket bat, wasting as little time as possible on fripperies such as washing hair, I didn't mind.

When thoughts began to turn to other things such as sharper clothes – ah, the laughter of friends, but there was a time – and hairstyles, I began to feel like the man who went into a barber's of the time and asked for a Tony Curtis.

Surveying the result in the mirror, he groaned: "Tony Curtis doesn't get his hair cut like that." To which the barber replied: "He would if he came in here."

My father's sentiments exactly, so, for haircuts only, we parted company and I had a year or two of longer hair and Tru-gel styling. There was also an interlude with a mullet best forgotten, coinciding as it did with the episode of the moustache, but I managed to buy all the photographs.

However, I soon reverted to short at the front, tapered at the back, thin it out on top and, as a man of regular habits, have stuck to that ever since.

Not exciting? True, but – and far be it from me to suggest comparisons – so has George Clooney.