skyring

"Straight or tapered?"

He asks me every time I go in, and for the life of me I cannot remember what I said the previous time. You'd think that three months of growth wouldn't have disguised the underlying contour and, like some hairbrush-wielding archaeologist, he could work out from the evidence before him just how he'd sculpted the back end of my hairline on my last visit to the barber shop. But he asks every time, and I either make a wild guess or ask him to take a stab at it.

Personally, I couldn't care what he does with the hair on the back of my neck. No skin off my nose if it's straight or tapered or crinkle-cut. what I don't like is being asked to make a choice.

It's a slow day and as he rams the razor into my earholes, he offers to trim my eyebrows. My bushy eyebrows. "Too right!" I say with enthusiasm, and he combs and cuts in appalling intimacy, shearing off years of undergrowth. It feels trim and elegant. He moves away and I ask, half-seriously, "You'll do the other one, won't you?"

He chuckles and assures me that when he gets around that side, he'll do the other one.

I don't care what I look like from behind, but I'd feel unsettled if I had one wild and woolly eyebrow and the other a slender shadow.

In other news, the washing machine was repaired yesterday, at a cost only marginally cheaper than buying a new one, and I now have the freedom to wash my socks whenever I like. Bliss.