Tag Archives: head shaving

Night Falls

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I just wrote a political manifesto, but as Julia pointed out, my plan for making sweeping changes to the way the country is run is impractical as we don’t have capital punishment or guns. And merely shooting the makers of reality TV programmes won’t immediately make the participants and viewers go out and take up education again.

She’s probably right, after all, in the USA they have lots of guns and capital punishment and their current political system has chosen to attack education rather than roll it out for everyone.

I’ll leave politics to other people.

Damsel Fly – Wilford

Instead, I will devote my thoughts to haircuts. My hair looks neatest when it is in a waste basket, and my head looks best when emulating a billiard ball. It is a tidy style to maintain with my excellent head shaver. Unfortunately, I don’t always keep it shaved. My recent experiences with the sun stopped me shaving for a bit, as my head was sore for a while. It was also dry, which is exacerbated by electric shaving.

Yes, I can moisturise, but I hate the idea of having small bits of passing debris  taking up residence on my head.

So, I now have hair. It has gone through the phase where it sticks out and makes me look astonished, and has become long enough to lay down and look like very short hair. Well, it does in patches. That’s the problem with being bald. It’s not the lack of flowing manly locks that worries me, or the visible manifestation of old age, it’s the untidy nature of partial coverage of the scalp. It’s untidy. Shaving tends to even things out and looks smarter.

Insects on Thistles

It is just unfortunate that a shaved head and the attendant folds of flesh at the top of my neck tend to make me look like prison officer from one of the less liberal countries of the world. Allied to a small, indistinct photograph (like the one of my driving license) I begin to look less like I’m involved in law enforcement and more like I’m involved in organised crime. I just don’t have the boyish good looks of a romantic hero.

And so, ruminating on what my life might have been if I had charm, good cheekbones and a cheery demeanour, I will go back to plotting world domination by means of light verse.

It’s likely to be an uphill struggle.

Marmalade Hoverfly

Marmalade Hoverfly

 

 

The Bald Man Diaries

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Julia by the Canal

It has been a long time since I had an electric shaver, but the special head shaving shaver Julia bought me for Christmas has been excellent. I cut my hair a few weeks before Christmas (she let me have it early) and after initially taking my hair back to the scalp with my normal trimmer I have been able to render myself bald and tidy without a problem ever since.

It is so much easier than finding all my shaving gear, lathering up my head, contorting my arms to reach the tricky bits and, once in a wile, having to saunch the bleeding. Modern wet razors are very good and I am a a careful man so blood is not obligatory, but it always a fear. That is why I tend to be an enthusiastic shaver for a few weeks then let it grow for a year or so after that, until it becomes long, straggly and slightly sinister.

I tend not to take selfies at that point as I look like the school janitor in so many horror movies, or the barber in the Westerns who betrays the marshal to the gunman.

I have been wondering, since staring to use it, where all the hair goes, as not much seems to come out when I brush it.  I thought it might be like cutting a lawn. If you give grass two light cuts a week you don’t need to clear it up and it does not build up thatch. However, it seemed unlikely as hair clippings aren’t going to mulch down. So I had a good root about with the brush and a toothpick. It seems the clippings pack down really small, and there are, once you get going, more places to hide than you think there are.

Julia, Sutton-on-Sea

That’s not all I have done, to be fair. I have finished off twenty poems that form this months submissions. I planned my time better this month and had a few things ready weeks in advance, though some needed fine tuning today. This is still 24 hours better than usual, so I am feeling more relaxed, and quietly pleased with myself.

I am now gathering my resources for a week of writing about numismatics before getting back to poetry.

There was an interesting programme on about Geoff Capes tonight. He was, amongst other things, World’s Strongest Man twice, an Olympic athlete and an internationally known breeder of budgies. He was also a local man and I remember seeing him when he was a policeman in Peterborough. We ate a takeaway curry as we watched. The curry was delivered from a kitchen based in a pub where I used to drink nearly 50 years ago. At that time we had chip shops and a couple of Chinese takeaways in town. It never occurred to me that we would end up with dozens of restaurants operating a delivery service. Times change.

Julia on the patio

As the year draws to a close, it is good to count your blessings, which is the reason for the photos.