Dozy Writes

This is the follow up to last week’s blog post.

With my ego only slightly bruised from my first attempt at cutting hair on a real human head, I continued attending my barbering course at college two nights a week.

We started to need more hair models so we could practise our newly gained cutting skills so we all begged, pleaded and cajoled our loved ones to help us. My job working in HR meant I knew most people in the organisation so I spoke to the men at work, persuading them it would be a great idea to come into the college to be a model for me. I didn’t really have to try hard, many of them enjoyed the novelty of being a model even if it meant it took two hours to get their hair done.

It wasn’t always a pleasant experience for the models though. There was a particularly memorable occasion when the 14 year old son of one of the student’s friends came in for a haircut, having been urged to do so by his mother.

The tutor used to walk around, checking on our progress, and when she stopped in front of this lad she discovered something.

“Dandruff!”

Her cry reached all corners of the room but not because she was upset by it. Far from it. This was an exciting discovery because we had recently been learning about different scalp conditions.

“Come over here, girls!” she called. “Do you see what this is? It’s dandruff! Come and smell it. You can tell it’s dandruff because dandruff has a particular smell.” It seemed impossible that she could use the word “dandruff” any more than she already had.

The poor lad slumped down in his chair, absolutely mortified as she invited us to go and smell his head.

And yes, it turns out that dandruff does have a particular smell but it’s not unpleasant. It’s just an indication that allows hairdressers and barbers to identify if it is in fact dandruff or some other scalp condition which may need to be treated differently. There is no shame in having it, most people will have experienced it at some point in their lives.

Despite this, I don’t think that young lad came back to the training salon again.

Colour me happy

After we did a few haircuts, it was time to introduce us to hair colour. I was a little bit nervous about this as I didn’t really get on so well when doing chemistry at school. There were a variety of types of hair colours and techniques that we had to use in order to pass the various assessments in this unit.

My very good pal demonstrated the true depth of his friendship by donning a highlighting cap and allowing me to pull through tufts of his hair with a crochet hook. This process, which was common in the 1980s, should frankly be illegal given how torturous it is. The end result looked great though.

Another pal at work volunteered to get the tips of his hair highlighted. He wanted to get a photo taken of the finished result and then cut them off. We also planned to colour the rest of his hair with some natural tones. Before starting the process, I was discussing colour options with him when my tutor came along to ask what we were going to do. I said to her, “We’re thinking of going for a bit of a George Clooney vibe.”

She looked thoughtfully at him then shook her head dismissively saying, “Him? George Clooney? No.”

She then walked away. He and I were left open-mouthed, staring after her. She actually meant that George Clooney’s colouring wouldn’t suit my pal as they had different skin tones. Well, that’s what I told my pal.

Beauty school dropout

The most interesting experience I had colouring hair involved my boss who had stayed true to his word and turned up as a model for a variety of haircuts and had now volunteered to get some hair colour. He had a patch of grey hair coming through at the front of his head that looked a bit like a Mallen streak so we decided to optimise it by bleaching a section and then adding some silver colour to it. 

The bleaching part went well but when I applied the silver colour it looked quite blue. I checked with my tutor to see if I had done anything wrong but no it appeared that I had followed all of the instructions. We thought perhaps that it would wash out to silver but as I rinsed away the colour, the streak of hair was definitely powder blue.

I felt as if I had become the Highland version of Frenchie from the film Grease. I was just waiting for Frankie Valli to turn up to sing Beauty School Dropout to me. We were about to take remedial action when my boss decreed that he loved the colour and wanted to keep it. He got a lot of compliments and actually came back to get it coloured again.

One of my fellow students had a slightly more extreme issue with hair colour. A guy had come into the training salon to get his hair coloured. He’d chosen a lovely shade of violet and so she got on with it. She had a similar issue that I’d had with the silver/blue except her client’s hair started to turn pink. Not a nice shade of pink. Salmon pink.

We had to bleach his hair again and there ended up being five of us standing around him with hair dryers encouraging the bleach to develop faster. By the time he left, it was a soft pink. Fortunately, he was a hairdressing student and had experienced something similar so he was quite good-natured about it.

A cut throat situation

As if the hair colouring wasn’t dangerous enough, our tutor then introduced us to the cut throat razor which we would be using to shave the back of the neck and around the hairline. I was terrified of using it at first, thinking it was going to slip out of my hand leaving a trail of cuts along the way.

We were taught using the classic method which involved lathering up a balloon with shaving foam and then shaving it off. We were all very nervous waiting for the balloon to pop but it didn’t happen. We started to feel a bit more confident and began to try it on our skin, shaving tiny patches of hair on our arms. One of my pals got carried away and started shaving her legs. She didn’t want to waste an opportunity to carry out a beauty treatment.

Another one of my pals came in for a haircut and I had to shave the nape of his neck with a razor  as part of an assessment. I was holding the cut throat razor in my hand, busily telling him that they aren’t as dangerous as everyone thinks they are, when I inadvertently sliced my finger. The most tremendous part of that experience was that he still let me shave his neck despite my injury. I’m not sure if my friends are suckers for punishment or if they trust me more than they should.

Disclaimer: I feel it’s only fair to reassure you at this point that it’s actually very rare for a client to be on the receiving end of a cut, most hairdressers and barbers are more likely to cut themselves by mistake.

Rock and roll barbers

A couple of years later, I decided that I wanted to expand my use of the razor to include doing a full cut throat shave so I duly sourced a course to attend. I needed to take a model with me so A.P obliged, without hesitation it has to be said.

We arrived at the event which was run by the Great British Barber Bash. Barbering has become very rock and roll in recent years so it was almost like going to a festival. The vibe was very much rockabilly clothes, sharp beards and sharp razors.

The course began with demonstrations of beard cutting and cut throat shaving followed by quite an intense practical session where we had to use a cut throat razor, without the blade I hasten to add, on each other’s faces so we could work out the level of pressure we needed to apply.

We were slowly approaching the moment when we would need to do this for real and my nerves were jangling. Not a great position to be in when you’re holding a razor to someone’s face. 

I started slowly and shaved A.P’s face twice, as we had been taught. The tutor was encouraging and impressed with the end result. I had managed to give A.P a clean shave with only one tiny nick on his chin which he catches himself every time he shaves. The tutor himself confessed that he would have found it difficult to shave A.P’s face as he has such strong beard growth – we’re not talking Desperate Dan levels but he regularly sports a 5 o’clock shadow. This admission gave me even more of a boost and I was feeling quite chuffed with my effort.

The same could not be said for the girl next to me who was shaving her husband. When she finished and he started to sit up, her face dropped and she said, “Oh, there’s quite a lot of blood.” That was an understatement. The poor man’s face was in ribbons. I’m not sure how their journey home went.

Despite gaining this experience, it seemed that not many of my friends were keen to let me practise on their faces. I think Sweeney Todd has had a negative impact. I continued to practise on A.P for quite some time before we got bored of it. Honestly, it’s quite a cumbersome process with the foam and the towels and then more foam and more towels. You can actually get a closer shave with a modern five-blade razor although the multiple applications of shaving foam and hot towels do actually make the skin softer.

Also, it seems to be mandatory nowadays to have tattoos on your fingers when doing cut throat shaves and although I toyed with the idea, I ultimately decided against having LOVE and FATE emblazoned across my digits.

Barbering in the workplace

After finishing my barbering course, I carried on cutting hair in my spare time. I never went anywhere without a comb and a pair of scissors and I soon became known in my work as the fifth emergency service. The AA had already taken the title of the fourth emergency service although technically that should have actually been the coastguard. Maybe I was the sixth emergency service? Regardless, I was the one to call if you’d had a bad haircut. 

One time, a colleague at work had got an asymmetrical cut and it hadn’t been layered properly. She asked my opinion about it as she wasn’t happy with how it was sitting. I explained where I thought the error was and recommended she go back to her hairdresser to get it fixed but she looked at me pleadingly until I asked, “Would you like me to sort it for you?” Her enthusiastic nod of the head had me reaching for my scissors and the disaster was remedied.

I was also very popular for fringe trims and could fix any errors made when someone attempted to chop their own fringe at home.

I had a particularly amusing moment at work when I agreed to do a haircut for a member of senior management. There wasn’t really anywhere to go so we decided that the cleaning cupboard would be a good venue. It was a fairly large cupboard and housed the heating system so it was very cosy, if a little bit cluttered. He was concerned that people would think something strange was going on so when I finished the haircut, he suggested that he leave first and I should follow five minutes later, as if we were having an affair. If our colleagues hadn’t already thought there was something strange going on in the cupboard, they certainly did when they saw us emerging guiltily from the cupboard. I had to explain that it was only a haircut, nothing more.

A Donna-Do

The one thing I loved the most about doing hair was the transformation that took place for a person, not just physically but the emotional change. The act of focusing your attention on one person makes such a difference. We had a client who came into the college for a haircut after his shift at the hospital. He had a very intense job and loved that he could come into the training salon and get a head massage whilst having his hair washed as well as getting a haircut. You could see him relax and let the day’s worries drift away from him. 

A friend of mine used to give her pals a “Donna-Do” as a gift – basically she’d arrange for them to get a haircut from me. One of her pals was struggling with a period of depression and when I first met her, she was folded in on herself and clearly in a dark place. I dyed her hair, gave her a new haircut and she bounced out like a new person. She looked amazing but she had also felt the benefit of having spent time with someone who was interested in her. She told me later that it had felt better than a counselling session.

There is something about the interaction between a barber or hairdresser and their client that can make it seem like a counselling session. A strong bond exists, perhaps because you have entered into their personal space so there is a level of trust there. The added element that I believe makes a difference is the lack of face-to-face contact. It is much easier to share your deepest thoughts and worries when someone isn’t looking directly at you. 

I love the connection I feel with someone when I cut their hair. I feel very privileged that they are willing to be vulnerable around me. My favourite part is a little moment that occurs as I reach the end of the haircut where I look at the person through the mirror and place my hand on their shoulder, seeing their happiness at the result. I always feel they look lighter perhaps because they’ve had a bit of a rest and a release as well as having had a physical transformation. That moment is always a little bit magical for me.

I stopped doing so many haircuts after I moved to London four years ago and I feel as if I have lost some of the skills because I don’t do it so much anymore but it’s always there in the background. It’s a helpful skill to have because it will always be an option to earn money. 

The other benefit, of course, is that if things don’t work out with A.P, I have a sure-fire way of meeting new men!