My hair, I love you. More than that I am grateful to you for sticking around for so long.
I know 42 years doesn’t sound much. Certainly not when Canadian Redwoods can live up to a thousand years and Bruce Forsythe’s grip on life seems to be eternal. But if I’m honest I didn’t think you’d make it through my twenties.
My dad showed distinct signs of male pattern baldness in his early twenties – receding hairline at front, sides and rear. The monk’s pate soon revealed itself.
I felt that Fate was surely waiting in the wings to cruelly crop my luscious tawny brown curls. It would only be a matter of time.
In my late teens I made the decision to grow my hair long. I’ll make the most of it while I’ve got it, I thought. And for the next decade I wore my hair down to my waist.
It thinned a little I’ll admit. I braced myself for that first small tell-tale hole in the carpet to appear.
But it didn’t. It wore thin. It got a little threadbare. But full depletion never occurred. I outgrew my long hair. In my thirties I got it cut and went for a more respectable, shorter, office friendly length.
I feared this sudden change in volume and weight might trigger off a seismic follicle reaction which would see my locks leaping off my head like hirsute lemmings.
But no.
Here we are over ten years later and – though various stray fibres make escape bids daily in the shower or on my comb – largely my riah has remained securely in place.
And now I’m getting my hopes up. I’m beginning to get confident that maybe my lugs are here for the long haul. That me and my quiff are destined to share a worm-eaten box together in God’s good brown earth, destined to be examined and carbon dated by a hologramatic version of Tony Robinson in the year 2678 (a date that I have just typed in at random).
I know that the odds are stacked against me: work stress, youngest boy about to start school next September, eldest boy approaching teen-hood, my complete and utter contempt of Grecian 2000... all agents of the dreaded demon of depilation... but I feel that the roots of my hair run deep. We are bonded in ways that are unbreakable. Unassailable.
Not even Delilah herself would dare mess with my mane.
My ruff is too rough to be ravaged by mere Philistines.
So take a good look at me, Old Age! I’m coming for you permed and preened like Jon Bon Jovi in his heyday! Look upon my locks and weep oh poor denuded ones!
Hair today. Hair forever.
Amen.
This was a public service announcement brought to you on behalf of my hair. Thank you for bristling.
