What would make young people go to a hairdresser and ask to be given a haircut more commonly seen on an alpaca at a petting zoo? You know the cut I mean: shaved sides the width of a razor above the ears and what can only be described as a curly perm on the top.
Also, what is it with older young men and a slightly longer version of the cut? This one is usually seen paired with a moustache, the hair recalling in some cases the late great but un-moustachioed Kevin Keegan in his hirsute heyday (hairday?) but in other cases the Harry Enfield scousers characters. Minus the moustache women are also sporting the style. Hipsters, students, people who should know better. Some people do carry it off better than others, of course, but others look like they’re about to offer to fix your washing machine in a cliched seventies porn offeeing. I truly believe that hairdressers should be more empowered to say ‘mate, really? You’ll regret it….’.
I’ve been at Swn Festival this weekend, and doing a lot of people watching in between bands, hence my musings on the current state of the nation’s coiffs. There’s not one but three universities in the city so there are a lot of students about the place – this part of the wider city music festival is like the Fringe (no pun intended) of other festivals. Indie, shoegaze, post-punk, angry young women, alt-country, ethereal rock, doom rock – it’s eclectic. Standouts for me have included Personal Trainer and Lauren Auder. As is always the way there are clashes so I didn’t get to see holybones. The festival is scattered across lots of small venues including churches, bars and clubs, and there’s no camping or portaloos involved.
Picking back up on the theme of this post, a good hairdresser is someone to be cultivated and especially so if they know you well enough to say ‘are you sure?’ I’ve had a few of these over the years, including my current one in the village I live in.
Like Newton Pulsifer in Good Omens (the book) the most I can hope for from a haircut is shorter hair. Style is frequently beyond me as despite having owned my hair for 53 years and counting I have never quite got the hang of it, possibly because it’s in a constant state of flux. As a small child it was white blonde and curly and then it went dark and dead straight, which sounds simple except that when I was about 14 it went curly again. Thing 2’s hair did the same. It was stable if not manageable until I started having kids and then it just got curlier.
But not consistently. That would be too easy. People who don’t have curly hair wish they did. People with curly hair frequently wish they didn’t, except on those rare days when it looks absolutely bloody amazing, bouncy and non-frizzy with the same sort of curls all over. The days when people say ‘wow, your hair looks amazing, you should wear it like that every day.’ Honey, I would love to.
Yesterday was one of those days, and all I’d done was put some leave-in conditioner in it, finger comb it and let it get on with it. Crucially, this is exactly the same thing I do every other day.
There are whole social media accounts and groups dedicated to the curly girl method, and they talk about their routines and sleeping in bonnets and on satin pillows, and the need for silicone free products. They talk about ‘scrunching out the crunch’ and applying product with ‘praying hands’ and how this gives them consistent results. The only praying I do is that when it’s finished drying I don’t look like Sideshow Bob, and some days the goddess of curly girls listens and sometimes she doesn’t. Either way, my hair is a mystery.
A customer in the pub I worked in used to say that he could tell what mood I was in by seeing what my hair was doing – it was an extension of my personality, according to him.
The only other guarantee with it is that as soon as I get to the stage where it desperately needs a cut – when I can’t do a thing with it and I resemble ‘an owl in an ivy bush’ as my mother says – I’ll book in with Jasmine at the salon and for the period between booking and cutting it will behave itself, look fabulous every day and generally make me feel like it is, indeed, worth it as the adverts say. I don’t know if there’s an equivalent of Murphy’s Law for hair but there ought to be.
Things making me happy this week
- The season finale of Ted Lasso – we need a season five. I need to see Roy Kent in dad mode.
- Catch up with cousin Sal over cocktails at The Bootlegger in Cardiff, people watching all the couples on first dates via a new app.
- Reading all the graffiti in music venue toilets… my favourite being ‘ if I can walk here from Canton in heels u can do anything’
- New crochet scarf project started on the bus to Wales. It took 50 minutes longer to get from Victoria to Cardiff on Wednesday than it did to go the 18 miles from Chancery Lane to home on Tuesday. Go figure.
- A whole week off.
See you on the other side!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Risk/The Play – Elle Kennedy
The Crow Moon – Sarah Painter
