Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Hair funk

I have just realised it has been more than 5 months since I last got my hair cut in China.

My last haircut was, in fact, in Edinburgh at the beginning of August. Since I usually get it cut about every 6 weeks or so, that is a very long gap. I am becoming decidedly shaggy: not quite a Beatles moptop yet, but well on the way. It's hanging nearly 2 inches over the top of my ears now, and I can't keep on brushing it back every few minutes. And the worst of it is that it knots so terribly when it's this thick. My hair's falling out quickly enough these days as it is, without my yanking clumps of it out by the roots each day with an incautious sweep of the comb.

I have been thinking the situation requires urgent attention for the past month or so. I have now been somehow failing to take the necessary action for 4 or 5 weeks.

As I recounted in that previous post on getting one's hair cut in China, the place that I had been using since sometime in the second half of 2005 had suddenly turned deeply crap; my first attempt to find a replacement closer to home had proved even more disastrous; and now I am simply dreading going into a new and strange hairdresser's and trying to mobilise my few dozen words of faltering Chinese to try to obtain the substantial trim I so badly need.

I had been planning to take advantage of a rare work-free day today to grasp the nettle.... but slept in late, pottered aimlessly around the apartment all morning, cooked lunch, cleared the backlog of neglected washing-up, etc. - procrastination, procrastination, procrastination. I had promised myself I would head out in search of a haircut at 2pm. Or so. I still haven't gone. It's now after 3......

However, I have spent 20 minutes with a dictionary dutifully swotting up words and phrases that might be of some use to me in this ordeal. "A little shorter." "A lot shorter." "It's still too long." "I washed my hair already."

And I swear - as soon as I've finished this post - I am...... going...... to........ do........ it. Yes, really.

Here I go. Wish me luck!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMG! I had no idea this was as stressful an experience for men as it is for women. Your procrastination, waiting for another trip home, going through the dictionary, all of it is soooo familiar.

and had you hair really grown that moppy? I think I see you fairly regularly, why didn't i feel the urge to turn you upside down and sweep the floor?

Froog said...

Only because I'm too heavy to be easily manipulable. (Yes, everything I say is fraught with layers of metaphor!)

Your anxiety is probably compounded by your greater concern for how you look, and the greater complexities of the instructions you'd like to be able to give.

I'd like to be able to say: "I'd like a short, neat, Army-officer-ish trim; two inches off the fringe, thinned on top, light clippering up the back and over the ears; something that's not going to grow out to its current length for at least a month. And I need it done quickly, with no fussing."

What I actually say is: "I want haircut. I go in 20 minutes. You understand? Thank you."

The British Cowboy said...

Tulsa

It ISN'T as stressful an experience for men as for women.

I'll leave you to ponder over what the implications of that are.

Anonymous said...

LOL.... to both of you.