less hair

This morning, I had my hair cut for the first time in a good two months. It was getting long in the places where it still grows and tickling my ears. This weekend, after my ten-day vacation and free from the stress of organizing and preparing it, I finally found the leisure to walk over to the barber's.

Sometimes this little activity still startles me. In France, used to the single-digit dollar haircuts I enjoyed in Salt Lake, I couldn't bring myself to give my hair professional care. Given its increasing thinness, the expense didn't seem to be justified. Over two-and-a-half years I obstinately cut my own hair, with a machine that cost a third of a haircut in town. No doubt, the result was horrible.

In London, where everything else is expensive, haircuts are much cheaper than in France, and I decided to ditch the cutter. It took some looking here and there, but at some point I found a shop close by that gave me a good cut. For the last half year or so, the same friendly Algerian has been taking care of my hair, mostly just dusting off and wiping clean, neatly packaged in a French conversation about n'importe quoi.

This morning, I was treated to a bigger show. When I entered the shop, what turned out to be a Nigerian televangelist without a camera was pontificating before bemused customers, all of them Arabs. Striding up and down the tiny room, he vociferously bemoaned drinking, smoking and the relentless rise of the Arabic language in our neighborhood. The inflection of his stentorian voice rapidly alternated between religious and hilarious, sometimes within one sentence. The waiting customers couldn't avoid having a blast.

When it was his turn to meet the scissors, his sermon briefly stopped. His head lost its hair, then did his face. He rose a different man. When his voice came to life again, it was not to preach but to contest the charge for trimming his beard.

Though he sounded exactly the same as before, and defended his position with the same passion, he didn't stand a chance against the combined might of three increasingly irritated barbers. In the end, he capitulated and paid the two extra pounds, but didn't lose his good humor. With a booming Good bless you all, he walked out of the shop. It was my turn to take the chair he had abandoned.