Hair Wars
by John GibbFor security reasons, I have been forced to leave the Metropolitan suburbs and retire to a remote village in Suffolk. Little happens here. The seasons are marked in the woodlands and fields. And everyone knows everyone else’s business. Affairs come and go and are discussed. Fashions rarely change and politicians ignore us. Totally. There is what passes for a small town about five miles away. In it are four hairdressers and a beauty ‘Salon’ where you can go for facials etc.
I’ve tried three of the hairdressers where a man can get his hair cut at prices ranging from a fiver to forty quid. Only at the most expensive can you have your hair done by a male but none of them will arrange for their customers to be fitted for toupees. When I was young, baldness was a curse and your barber would order you up a Crown Topper for a small fee. Crown Toppers advertised on the front page of the Telegraph almost every day. They were renowned for only employing completely bald men. They claimed, rightly as it turned out, that nothing could dislodge a Topper. The Daily Mirror confirmed this in the sixties after strapping the sales manager to a chair in the British Aerospace wind tunnel in Weybridge and winding it up to 220 knots. The wig, shaped like a veal escalope remained bonded to the skull. Young bald men felt themselves cursed in those days, until they learnt from Phil and Grant that the answer to hair loss was to shave it all off and pretend it was fashionable. It was also vaguely intimidating which is why all football supporters are completely bald rather than half bald like Captain Manwaring.
It was the start of an unfortunate trend. I haven’t mentioned the other hair treatment establishment in our local town, which is the Beauty salon, “Gabriel’s.” Every year most of the women in the village steel themselves and make an appointment for a Brazilian. This really irritates me and it does more than irritate the village women; you can see them limping around the market square throughout July. The procedure involves trimming the pubic hairs to a stubble and placing a fabric immersed in adhesive over the pubic mound and the vaginal and anal areas. After this fiendish dressing has formed a bond, the therapist whips it off, probably crying “Banzai” at the top of her voice as she does so. So all that beautiful, curly, fragrant hair is torn out by the roots, just so women can wear bikinis and buttocky shorts without fear of showing a stray wisp in public.
The same applies to athletes. You can bet your last Euro that the British female four by one hundred metre sprint relay team will all have been mutilated in this way so they can bend over with confidence at the starting blocks in the early Olympic heats. On the other hand, I am assured by a friend who works for Macdonalds in Paris, that French athletes have no such reservations, and by another friend who works for Coca Cola, that neither do the Italians. The Greeks certainly don’t. They have no economy worth talking about but, at least, they have their pubic hair.
I don’t understand what’s going on. I was brought up with the luxuriant bush and I love it. It is a glorious and erotic frame in which to set that beautiful pink, wet orifice. Why rip it out and replace it with something which looks like a freshly plucked Partridge? I am happy to make a prophesy of a return to natural growth. I don’t mean I like the idea of foliage overflowing from of a pair of baggy knickers. I just want to bring back “THE BUSH.”
I’m going to have a glass of whisky now because the concept of bald women has upset me. To make it worse, Nigella is on television modelling a brown faux-fur apron which she says she bought in Kansas. It’s set my brain alight. But not my bush.
