how to rule the universe in 21 days

Haircut

Today I went for a haircut.

The past weekend was a long weekend holiday for the UK, with both Friday and Monday off. Obviously most people had been spending the time vigourously coaxing their hair out of their scalps for the barber shops were bustling with business. When I got to my regular barbers there were two people being served in the chair, plus another four waiting - pretty busy for a Tuesday afternoon. Of the two barbers at work, one of them was new to me, while the other had butchered my hair twice already, something which I didnt want happening again.

The barber system here is pretty efficient; whenever a chair is freed up, the next person in line simply goes up to fill it. In this way the line is kept moving and there is never any downtime. The downside is you can never choose who cuts your hair, unless you are willing to sacrifice your place in line. Fortunately, luck was with me today, and I finally got my seat with the new guy who was Italian.

I told him I wanted a number 3 sides and back, and shorter all around. Over here the barbers use a numbering system to indicate how much of your hair you want shaved off. First timers from overseas are often caught unawares by the system.

Essentially number 4 is neat but still long, number 1 is smooth like a babies butt and 2 and 3 are somewhere in between. Kind of like this picture here. But not really.

Anyways, this new barber had some kind of water fetish. You know that spray thing they use to wet your hair? He had cunningly modified his (or it had broke) so that instead of the usual gentle spray, what came out was huge spurts like from a water cannon. He seemed blissfully unaware of this fact and pulled on the trigger repeatedly as if he had just escaped from a Tarantino movie until my face was literally dripping with water. I actually had to blow out of my mouth to get rid of the water seeping in. He seemed unhappy unless he had a 100% liquid environment to work in.

Then when he actually started cutting my hair, there was so much excess water that the hair slid all over my face and stuck there, so that I looked somewhat like king kong but without the hairy ass. I began noticing passers by staring at me curiously. Its hard to faint nochalance when you have a face full of hair and are dripping liquid, but damn it, I did my best. The one thing I couldnt do was whistle, as I would have blown out puffs of hair.

Anyway, in the end the hair cut turned out ok, for a price of £10.50. I hear in London you can get cheaper cuts in China Town, but around here, this is about as good as it gets.

So there you go. Done for another year.

posted by justsomeguy @ 10:44 AM