11:13 pm
I have just cut my hair. That is to say, I, wielding scissors, have just cut my hair. I now look like Oliver Cromwell. Which wasn't the desired outcome.
Of course, you will say, you could have visited a no-Cromwells-allowed hair-sculpting palace. You live within sauntering distance of no fewer than six such establishments, patronised by the lustrous-locked foxettes of Leichhardt.
To which the answer is, no, no, I couldn't. I am utterly at the mercy of a protestant stinginess ethic, so aggressive in the case of hair-dressing that I have seen a professional hair-dresser once, and once only, in all my one score and eight years. Here I'd like to thank my sister, Mlle. Kirsten von Harlot, who kindly forked out the dosh for that singular experience.
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11:45 pm
Update: have now cut my hair again. I look like Joan of Arc. Have done such a splendid job of it, I'm thinking of setting up shop: "Harlot's Hair Removal Services" (or possibly, "Clip Joint", which would go nicely alongside "Hip Joint", my nightclub for seniors).
If anyone needs any hair, there's an enormous pile of it on my bedroom floor.
And if anyone has any ideas about what motivates a lass with a perfectly amicable relationship to her coiffure to suddenly hack thirty centimetres of it off, please write to this address. Until you do, I'm going with the inverted Delilah Complex theory.
Bon soir, mesdames.
20 comments:
I confine myself to the cheapest hairdressers I can find; once every five months or so. In my 29-and-a-bit years of existence, I have had incomprehensible things said to me by the Italian hairdresser, my face smooshed in the ample amplitudes of buxom female hairdressers, unshaven Lebanese young men set about my head with lawnmowers, hilarious gay hairdressers invite me to become a hair-model for them in the upcoming Newcastle Entertainment Centre Hair Modelling Contest, and various unguents of varying pH levels smeared in my hair. It's quite an experience, and I wouldn't change it for the world (though I would change it if I found a good hairdresser at the price of 20 dollars or under).
I'm tempted to quote Pope, you know, 'Cease, rash nymph, to morn they ravished locks/'Tis better far than Lurgy or the Pox.', but I won't.
Quoting Pope is one thing, but can you quote the Pope on matters tonsorial?
I rather fancy the Doctor, looking somewhat akin to Joan o' Arc, striding onto the dias, doctoral robes billowing, tattered copy of Plutarch wielded aloft, zealous fire brimming in her eyes &c would strike awe and fear into the hearts of the undergraduates.
Could be rather fun, what?
You're right about the zealous fire brimming in my eyes, St-J. I think I need eye drops.
Monsieur le Tim: if I'd known about the ample amplitudes and the unguents all these years, I'd have been going to hairdressers too. I hope you consented to the Hair Modeling Contest overtures. Opportunities for us layfolk to further the arts are few and far between.
P.S.: I don't think Pope was talking about hair. Not really.
Nottlesby: I don't quote the Man in the Vatican on matters tonsorial, I leave it up to him to make Ex Catheter statements.
Alexis - what on earth could Pope have been talking about then? Merkins?
(I didn't take the hairdressers up on the offer, though. My hair and I have an understanding. I let it do it's own thing, and it lets me do my own thing, and we like it that way. I don't think it would have appreciated being a performer, despite my own excursions into the dramatic art.)
Ok, ok, Pope's talking about hair, but we're put in mind of another possible site of ravishment, and merkins aren't too wide of the mark. Pope puns on "lock" (Belinda's lock of hair suggests the lock of her virginity [here, don your best Augustan smut-receptors and think locks-and-keys]). His use of "rape" to describe the lock's abstraction makes this fairly clear. The joke, of course, is that despite all the hoopla, the Baron really is just pinching a lock of hair, when he could be taking so much else.
Thus, by the swift application of a metaphor, the hairdressing profession loses a poem, and the erotic arts gains a poem.
I think my lecturer when I was studying the Rape of the Lock was Barry Spurr - he's da man! - and he did hasten to point out the significance of the lock in this particular case.
Or, to quote Mel Brooks:
"I knew her mother, Lord and Lady Bigell, before she was born. You were made for one another, you and Maid Marian: Locksley and Big L - how could it miss?"
I think hairdressing and the (ahem) erotic arts will just have to share. It's not just Pope who mixes his tonsure with his shenanigans. Even puritan Milton has Eve sporting "wanton ringlets". And Christina Rossetti, that paragon of Victorian womanhood, writes a poem about a couple of snogging sisters, one of whom trades a lock of hair for goblin juices. As for Byron: mad, bad, and dangerous with a hairbrush.
This certainly has put your post in a new light!
I just noticed a malapropism in my first comment.
Ah, well, in the rough and tumble of instantaneous publication, we're all bound to malapropise some time or other.
On the hair front: the kindly accountant who works in my corridor just saw me, threw her hands to her head and emitted a little shriek. Doesn't bode well.
A shriek, perhaps, because she knew that the girls down at the Joan of Arc Stakehouse were looking for new recruits and she espied a walking, lecturing, breathing, finders-fee-waiting-to-happen?
She shrieked? That's the best time to get 'em. Place both your arms out in front of your body and wave them about, at the same time rolling your eyes about, slavering*, and growling like a wild animal, and lumber angrily towards them, occasionally muttering, "Brains! BRAINS!"
*NOTE: I'm not to sure how you slaver, but I'm sure the Slavs will have some idea how to do it.
Best done in rags and wooden shoes, I think.
Indeed. If done correctly, you'll have them screaming and gibbering on the floor in no time.
Then again, I suppose that sort of action happens all the time in the public services. I think they get their pay docked if they don't writhe around on the floor screaming and gibbering.
Nottles: 'the Joan of Arc Stakehouse' -- !!! That's the best pun I've ever seen. How would you like your Joan of Arc t-bone? Rare, medium rare, or burnt at the stake?
Me, I'd prefer a bowl of lentils.
The best you've *ever* seen, Doctor? By Jove, that's a weighty call. During the War, I was briefly seconded to Her Majesty's Rapier Wits, where I earned a DPM (Distinguished Punning Medal) for capturing an entire Jerry battalion with one joke. Seems I've still got it, then, eh?
Awright. The best since lunchtime.
Hi Alexis. Been very much enjoying going through your blog archive, found you thanks to TimT there....
would you drop me an email? I'll make it worth your while, promise.
Laura
sillsbend@gmail.com
One email in train. Thanks for dropping by.
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