Things we took for granted before lockdown #157: getting a haircut. The pleasure of a visit to the barbershop is on the not-permitted list for another while.

I don’t know about women but for us men, we are bordering on hairstyles similar to those last seen on Match of the Day in the early 1980s!

In my case, it’s more David Soul’s 1970s “Hutch” look from Starskey and Hutch.

A critical situation had developed in my vain world and so, action was required. So for some reason I’ll never reconcile, I employed my son Patrick to perform his first haircut, on me! What transpired over the following 90 minutes wouldn’t have been out of place in a Laurel and Hardy script. Well intentioned, Patrick began confidently but after some jittery noisy shaves from neck to crown and wisps of hair floating down either side of me, it wasn’t looking nor sounding good from where I was sitting.

Catherina couldn’t help but laugh, you know the sort of laugh you try to conceal when you see something you know you shouldn’t laugh at but can’t help it?

His mother Catherina arrived on the scene. Catherina couldn’t help but laugh, you know the sort of laugh you try to conceal when you see something you know you shouldn’t laugh at but can’t help it? “Ah here, what’s happening?” I asked, somewhat calmly worried, unable to survey the destruction to the back of my head. “Eh, it’s not that bad really,” came the non-assuring reply through the muffled “laughing-at-Mass” type stitches.

Remedial action would be required to save myself giving customers queuing behind me in the supermarket a giggle for the next couple of weeks

Through dispatches, the back of my head was now resembling that of a monk or a “bowl cut” as it might be known. Remedial action would be required to save myself giving customers queuing behind me in the supermarket a giggle for the next couple of weeks. We needed to retrieve the situation. What else, but call my mother on WhatsApp. She and Dad had their feet up watching golf as they do. “Oh no,” was how my father solemnly responded to the virtual surveillance of my head from afar.

My mother tried to calm me like the way any mother tries to calm her whimpering child who had just fallen on the road and all the other children were laughing. “It will be alright.”

Then my daughter Deirbhile arrived at the scene of the crime. She also nearly passed out from laughing. When she finally picked herself up off the ground, she set about patiently taking to the next stage of camouflaging Patrick’s unintended attempt to have me audition for the role of Moe Howard in a remake of The Three Stooges.

Meanwhile, I was envisaging all this turning into the Father Ted scene where Ted spotted a dent on the bonnet of the car and in trying to fix it created two more and so on until the whole car was a crumble of dents!

Eventually, when she felt she had finessed some damage limitation, I asked meekly: “How does it look Deirbhile?”

“Well Dad, it’s better than it was,” she sighed.

Patrick concurred nervously in the belief that mere words would now suffice to reverse his act of follicle vandalism. Her forensic ingenuity had finally managed to stave off the contingency of going online to buy a hoodie.

Of course it’s better, but that is coming from a very low base to begin with

We called Nana and Gaga again. “Oh. It looks better,” said my mother. “Of course it’s better, but that is coming from a very low base to begin with,” chirped in my father decidedly not helping my feelings of foreboding as he continued to watch the golf.

I turned to Deirbhile for reassurance. Smiling, she replied: “Let’s just say you’re lucky you don’t work in television. At least it will grow back.” It sure will. But for the past week, every time I ring my parents, their first question is: “Well, how is the hair?”

Humanity reboot

It’s been a year. Let’s switch off and switch on again and reboot our minds as spring blossoms. Smile, be happy and let’s all look forward together.