Dozy Writes

Please note: I am splitting this post into two parts because I decided to use the AI Assistant on my website which checks content for spelling, grammar and other wordy things. It suggested that my content was good but perhaps a bit long. It further suggested that I add some headers to break up the text so I have followed its advice on this matter too.

Feel free to disagree with the AI Assistant because it is, after all, a robot, and we know how I feel about robots. That said, I am also aware that I have never been accused of being succinct so I have decided to just go along with it on this occasion.

I may have indicated previously that I can sometimes be easily distracted when writing. The truth is that it’s not only when I’m writing that I get distracted. 

A number of years ago, I was working full time in Human Resources (HR), and during my annual appraisal my boss and I chatted about the possibility of me going back to college to study a higher level of HR qualification. 

I agreed that I’d go along to an information evening at the college to see what was involved before I decided. It had been hard work studying for my existing qualification four years prior. I had found it stressful navigating attending college in the evenings and completing large and complex assignments whilst juggling a full-time job, a relationship and caring responsibilities for an elderly relative.

The information evening arrived and I duly presented myself. I knew some of the people there and had an enjoyable chat with them. I sat and concentrated as the tutor explained the content and duration of the course, I listened as my fellow HR professionals asked lots of earnest questions, and I thought to myself, I have absolutely no interest in doing this course.

It wasn’t a moment where I decided that I was no longer interested in working in HR. I still loved my job. No two days were the same and although it was often a frustrating job I never felt bored in the 13 years that I worked in the profession. 

However, I was no longer interested in the theory of it all, particularly as it rarely bears any resemblance to how it works in practice. I didn’t want to spend hours theorising about a situation, I wanted to continue getting stuck into the actual work because I felt that I was learning more by doing.

Here comes the distraction

My brain switched off once this realisation hit me, the chatter of the room dimmed to gentle hum and my eyes started to search the room, eager to find a distraction. It wasn’t long before they alighted on a poster, extolling the marvels of hairdressing. It turned out we were in a classroom in the hairdressing section of the college.

Aha, I thought to myself, I have always wanted to learn how to cut hair. A plan began to form in my mind. By the end of the night I had checked for available courses, found that there was an evening barbering class starting soon and registered an interest.

The next day I went into work and my boss asked me how I’d got on.

“Fantastic,” I replied. “I’m not particularly interested in doing the HR course but I am planning to do a barbering course instead so I’ll need to ask you to act as a hair model to practise on.”

To be fair to him, he swallowed his surprise quite quickly and then agreed that he would be happy to be a hair model when the time came.

The first few weeks at college were focused mainly around health and safety, the structure of the hair shaft, and understanding the concept of cutting guidelines and angles. It turned out to be far more mathematical than I had imagined and I realised that if we had used examples like this when learning mathematics in school, I may have retained more information.

A most “relaxing” experience

Next up on the learning curve was the washing of a client’s hair. Although many barber shops don’t have a basin, some do, and regardless, it was part of the coursework so we had to do it.

One of the biggest barriers to overcome was the breaching of personal space. I am generally a very tactile person but it tends to be more of a gentle touch on the forearm rather than running my fingers through someone’s hair. It took a little while to feel comfortable rubbing my hands all over a stranger’s scalp.

I got my hair washed by a fellow student on my first night at college. I didn’t particularly want or need my hair washed, I’d washed it that morning but we learned quickly that you just had to get on and do whatever needed to be done and for the first few weeks we were each other’s models for washing and blow drying. It was a giggle and we got to know each other quite quickly because we were in each other’s personal space.

A few weeks later, some volunteers came into the teaching salon to act as hair models. They were mostly friends and relatives of the students who had been persuaded into coming along through a process of cajoling and flattery at the idea of being a “model”. I was given the task of washing the hair of a young guy in his early twenties. I tried to remember everything I’d learned including the phrases “have you had a busy day?” and “have you been anywhere nice for your holidays?”. That was a joke, they don’t teach you that. I came up with those suggestions all on my own.

I was busy checking the temperature of the water and working out whether the petrissage or effleurage technique came first. I began to massage his scalp and asked the standard question required in order to pass my assessment:

“Is the level of pressure OK for you?”

The young guy took a moment then made a shifting motion in the chair followed by what can only be described as a gentle thrust before replying, “Yeah, it feels really good actually.”

I was torn between outrage and embarrassment, this lad was about 15 to 20 years my junior and I felt like some kind of predator – OK, so there was also a small part of me quite chuffed that I still had it but outrage was definitely clamouring for first place.

I would like to use the tabloids’ favourite comment by saying that I made my excuses and left but I had an assessment to pass. My face, never the best at hiding my emotions, was set in a grimace as I continued massaging his scalp whilst trying not to make the experience too relaxing.

Two heads are better than one

The debacle of the hair washing out of the way, it was time to get down to the business of actually cutting hair using one of the two mannequin heads that had come with our hairdressing kits. My mannequin heads were the same style and were both called Brad, not because I was devoid of inspiration but because Salon Services sold each style of mannequin head with a human name and it seemed rude to change it.

After our tutor showed us what to do, we were off! I was very excited to be cutting hair, particularly with scissors, as opposed to clippers. I’ve always found the snip, snip of scissors quite fascinating. Indeed, there is an assortment of Barbie dolls and Girls World heads sporting crude haircuts stored in the loft in my old family home that will attest to my fascination with scissors. 

I began to snip, snip away, my tongue poking out of my mouth in concentration, and before I knew it, Brad had his first hairstyle. Over the next couple of weeks we continued cutting the hair on our Brads, the styles becoming shorter and shorter until their flowing locks became a short utility haircut.

My first human model

After a couple of weeks of cutting Brad’s hair, A.P offered to be my first human model. I was excited but slightly nervous. To add to the occasion, I had invited A.P’s daughter and her boyfriend around for dinner so I could balance providing a cooked meal with doing a first time haircut together with the added pressure of an audience. Sometimes I look back and wonder what goes on in my mind.

I started the haircut and it was taking quite a long time because I was a bit tentative. After all, it’s easier to cut more hair but not so easy to fix it when you’ve cut too much off. The teenagers were sitting quietly, watching in fascination. There was a peaceful atmosphere, the kind that comes when everyone is focusing intently on something. It was quite soothing in an almost soporific way.

As time passed, however, I started to feel a bit stressed about the need to serve dinner. I decided that once I finished the first part of the cut we would stop to eat. That would allow me to go back to finish the final outline after dinner – it really only involved tidying around the hairline and ears so this idea made perfect sense.

Around this time, A.P’s daughter was experimenting making cocktails so any dinner gathering we had invariably involved a new cocktail to try. But first, we needed to have a salted caramel liqueur that I had become quite fond of. After a decent measure of the liqueur, we tried the new cocktail, a Slippery Nipple which is a concoction of Baileys and Sambuca. It was so good we decided to have another one.

I was sitting eating dinner when I realised that I was feeling a little bit drunk. I’d forgotten that we were pouring house measures rather than bar measures.

I looked over to A.P and saw the wispy bits of hair around his ears and I resolved to complete the haircut. I could not, in all conscience, let him leave the house with half a haircut.  I drank lots of water and ate lots of food to soak up the alcohol and after an hour I decided to get him back in the chair.

It was all going well until I came to the section around his ears. My problem was that I’d never cut hair around the ear before, Brad didn’t really have any ears because he was a mannequin so I found myself in a rather uncertain position. I was holding my comb and scissors and trying to cut the hair over his ear when A.P suddenly jumped up in his chair as if he’d received a massive shock.

“What happened there?” I asked him in concern.

“Nothing”, he replied, but the effort with which he was keeping his lips clamped shut suggested otherwise.

I looked at his ear and I could see a little bit of blood on his ear lobe. It appeared that I had inadvertently nicked it when trying to cut the hair over it. 

“Oh my God,”  I yelled, “I’ve cut your ear!” That’s me, calm and controlled in an emergency.

A.P reassured me that it was OK, it was just a tiny cut and he was fine.

Whether it was the shock or the alcohol, I started to laugh. My body was shaking from the effort of trying to smother the laughter but the more I realised how inappropriate it was, the harder it became to stop it. Before I knew it, I had fallen to the floor, rolling around, unable to contain the volume of laughter bursting out of me.

A.P gazed down at me from his chair, looking, it has to be said, not overly impressed. The teenagers snickered quietly in the corner, their faces registering a combination of shock and humour at my reaction. A.P gave me a little look that I call his come on now, let’s get on with it look – it needs a snappier title, I know – so after a couple of minutes, I gathered myself together and finished the haircut without any further issues. I will admit to there being some further bursts of laughter every so often but the hysteria gradually disappeared and A.P was smiling when he left.

The aftermath

A.P messaged me the next day to say that his colleague, an ex hairdresser, thought I had done a great job for my first haircut. I was heartened by this feedback and was looking forward to discussing it in detail when I saw him next but he was absent for a few days. I found myself worrying that he might have developed septicaemia but it turns out that he was just busy. Or so he said. 

You’ll be pleased to hear that our relationship survived that event and he still lets me cut his hair to this day. 

I no longer drink alcohol though.

Part two coming next week…