Jeremy Clarke
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My concern was that I didn’t want to look moth-eaten. So in the afternoon I rang up the lovely Elody. She said she could fit me in right away and I walked down to the village like a one-man ticker tape parade, debating with myself whether to ask her for a number one crop to even it out or to have it all off and be done with it. As I went I tugged at various points of my barnet to see if any of it still clung on with a degree of tenacity.
At the top of the village square is a bar. Sitting outside it was a sunburnt, bright-eyed, red-faced, red wine-pissed crowd come in from the countryside for market day. Among them was Chris, a Geordie builder, distinctly white, and his rangy, stunningly beautiful boar-hunting dog. I love his dog; his dog loves me. But Chris and I are only on nodding terms. As I passed by this time, however, Chris stepped forward and with a sort of reticent jubilation extended a hand. Chris is bald and humorously self-conscious about it. I plucked out two fistfuls of hair and settled them gently in his hand. Without missing a beat he said, ‘Fantastic! Thanks very much. Ta! Just what I’ve been needing!’
Elody was sweeping her previous customer’s glossy black hair into a heap with a soft broom as I walked in. Sometimes you go in and Elody looks fat, grumpy and dejected. At other times she’s bubbling over with happiness, athlete-fit, stylishly dressed, perhaps the most beautiful woman on Earth. Today she was brimming with health and vitality and wearing a short tight tangerine number with side slits. ‘Alors, Cherie!’ she said looking up from her broom head.
I yanked out a couple of handfuls of my hair and made a present of them to her. She clasped her hands to her head, squealed, and did a deft little foxtrot on the spot. I asked her to decide for the best between a shave and the shortest possible haircut. She thought the haircut and untangled the clippers. When she’d finished she was about to put her powerful blow dryer over it but I stopped her in case she blew what was left of my hair right off.
But now, two days later, it’s nearly all gone and I look mangy again. So now I wish I’d shaved my own head right at the start and bought a hat from the market instead.
Because you read about cancer
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