The Cruellest Cut

I am a little disconcerted. And discomfited, as it happens. My barber appears to have closed down his shop.

I'm a man of habits, particularly in the follicular forum. I had the same haircut for 19 years, for goodness' sake, from the age of 15. I scoffed at fashionable opinion, on the grounds that a stopped clock is right twice a day, and the style was bound to come in again at some point. I'm still waiting.

I only change my barber if I have to. I particularly liked this barber as he wasn't very chatty. Chattiness is fine in its place - say, when you're having a chat - but it's surely right that when a hairdressing professional is letting fly with sharp scissors around your ears he should be on the attentive side. Also, I don't know enough about football to sustain more than about a minute's conversation.

I don't know what I'm going to do. It's nearly time for my next haircut. I have flirted with other establishments when I've had to in the past, but it's like Russian roulette. Only with hair, and without the bullet. Or the gun. It's just that I'm too old to carry off an ironic haircut, so if it all goes wrong, I'm stuffed.

I hate my old barber for this.*

*Unless he's dead, in which case I'm very sorry.