Unkindest cut of all from the son with long hair

Press, 23 February 1978, Page 12

Unkindest cut of all from the son with long hair

The anaesthetic. That’s the one thing you really need if it’s boys’ hair you’re planning to cut. I know.

I started out taking the boy along to the hairdresser with me before he was to be cut himself. The first time he was trimmed he sat in sullen silence because he didn’t know what was happening to him; the second time it took two assistants to hold him down; and the third time I found they’d put the price up to five times what it had been before.

Hairdressers usually have some excuse for such rises like the shampoos are now to be made out of mare’s milk or the blowdry will also play 4 rock music; this time they candidly admitted that wasn’t it: they just couldn’t stand it any longer. They thought the price might be a deterrent. It was; so from then on it was the local all-male barbers or me; which was

when I started to do it myself.

It’s not that I’m naturally brave. I’ve been known to creep in and cut my son’s fingernails as they lay asleep; I frequently do my childbirth breathing exercises

even when only being shampooed by a harpy with long vicious nails. But, like most people, when it comes to the crunch I prefer even torture to shame; and at least when it’s me wielding the scissors the scenes happen in private. I could, I thought hopefully, do it in the bath. . . in front of the TV . . . blow-drying the cut hair off his bare shoulders afterwards.

It didn’t make the slight test difference, the posthaircut depression was the same. So we have now gone through the following styles, which can be seen walking along any London street. The Half-Nelson, This is a highly lopsided affair caused by the row being so frightful that the cutting mother gives up half way through. The Prison Trim. This is what you would call a haircut of despair; the child’s not going to like it, he isn’t going to look good; but at least if you nearly shave him to the scalp it’ll be a long time before it has to happen again. The Sheep-Dog Special. This is what happens when you get your own way at the back, which the boy can’t see; but are prevented from doing anything whatever to the front,

which he can. The effect is as of a child wearing a thick wig which someone has unkindly tipped forward over his eyes. The Yak. As above, except that the child not only can’t see out in front, he couldn’t find the back of his neck to wash it even if he wanted to. This follows the inevitable final scene where the mother says she will never touch it again ever as long as she lives, and if the teachers won’t let him in the classroom they can darned well cut it themselves.

After the discovery of this latter style, my boy groped his way blindly round the house for a few weeks and was led to school in the mornings by his companions. But when the swimming season started he cut most of it off himself: because surfacing like a seaweedcovered rock in the swimming pool apparently left him with a mouthful of hair and no idea in which direction to swim.

But the beautiful thing that has happened is that he now strides off to the barber himself; and I realise that while I’ve had my

head down over the basin the whole scene has changed. In the sixties it was the hairies, the hippies and the kids of middle-class intellectuals who had a lot of hair, while workingclass kids were still booted off to the barber by stern fathers. Now it’s the other way round, and the young and trendy like it quite a reasonable length. The only stragglers (I’m picking my words) are the ageing Lefties who think it would be a betrayal of all they hold sacred to shorten a single greasy strand, and the rougher stuff in the school playground who don’t realise that scissors can be used for other things besides sticking them into your enemies.

Alas, many a mother has prayed daily that a time would come when her son would see the light, and get his own hair cut beautifully short, and she could be proud of him.

And the day has come, and the hair is short; only’s he’s a punk rocker, and he’s got a safety-pin through his cheek and the hair is pale green. I’m telling you; you can’t win at this one. — OFNS