Small town in Middle England in “racist” shocker!
April 14th, 2008 at 15:55

As a member of of the Guardianista liberal elite, I was under the impression that we’d beaten racism. I thought that everyone was on board the anti-racism bandwagon - I was even beginning to wonder if the racist Daily Mail and Sun readers who are our sworn enemies existed solelyin my head, much like how the Aryan utopia we had before the forrens arrived only exists in their heads.

But today I went to get my hair cut, and had to make conversation outside of my sophisticated degree-educated demographic for the first time in ages, and to my horror, it turns out that casual racism isn’t dead… it would appear to be rife.

I made the mistake of explaining to the woman cutting my hair that I’m a politics student. I really should have known better than to reveal this information. This caused either the man getting his haircut next to me, or the man cutting his hair - I’m not sure who as I couldn’t turn my head because my hair was being cut - to go off on one.

“I hate politics, politicians don’t do anything for us, they’re only looking after themselves”, he began. Somehow, he moved on to talking about immigration, as all idiots tend to do.

I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t have the courage to challenge them on their views, not least because they appeared to be friends with the woman cutting my hair, and I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of someone with the power to make me look like an idiot. I did obviously formulate a counter-argument to all of their bullshit in my head, in order to mentally prove to myself that I’m not a racist, and so that I could post a response to their arguments in due course, in a place they’re most likely to see it: on an obscure corner of the internet.

“They come over here, speak their language and spend our money”, he said.

“You go to London and you couldn’t even tell what an Englishman was, its all black faces… Leicester is mostly black now… I might move to Newcastle, there’s no black faces there”, he continued. I was hoping that someone else would challenge him. “Give it ten years…” the other guy said. Gah.

The clear implication was that black people are somehow a bad thing.

I should probably have said something like “What’s wrong with black people?” or “Isn’t a nation defined by the people who live there, so the definition of an Englishman would be transitive? Wasn’t it Benedict Anderson who theorised that the nation by its very definition an imagined community?”. Not to mention point out the factual errors. Leicester isn’t majority black - whilst the non-white ethnic minorities collectively outweigh white people about 60% to 40%, white people are still the largest ethnic group. And anyway, he never actually explained why this is a bad thing.

Just as I was about to despair at the world, my mood was lightened slightly when the topic of conversation moved on to where the other people in the Barber’s shop were going on holiday. Y’know, going to other countries, speaking English and spending foreign currency.

This said, I wish I had challenged him about his views - it’d make a better story, and its not as thought defeating someone who claims that they “go on YouTube and look for videos of car crashes” is going to be the biggest intellectual challenge.

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Big Hair
February 22nd, 2007 at 01:34

I’ve been getting an increasing number of comments lately about the length of my hair (the real life kind, all of my blog comments have been from window cleaners). Its all got a bit ridiculous - my vision is bordered by hair, making everything I look at appear to be the establishing shot for a scene set in a jungle. It’s also just about long enough for me to look like someone who’s jumped on the emo bandwagon, as I can just about swish it over my eyes to illustrate how no one understands me.

Take a look:

Yeah, I did try to look as gormless as possible. I did consider attempting to smile, but thought that contorting my face at such close range might be slightly off putting. So I opted for a sort of deadened stare, where I’m looking not at you, but through you.

Usually, whenever I have a shave, which itself is a fairly rare event, I go and get my hair cut the next day, so I look consistent - the theory being that I need to balance out my face. Recently though, I’ve gone through a number of shaving cycles without getting my haircut. And you can clearly see the result above.

It’s quite weird when people start a conversation by talking about my hair, as I’m not used to it. Before I let my hair grow out of control, they’d usually start by commenting on my formidable dress sense or asking me to press ‘OK’ and enter my pin number. The woman in Virgin Megastores actually looked up, then down at my student card, then up, then down again, with her mouth slightly aghast when verifying that I can have a student discount, such is the disparity between my “usual” appearance on the photo on the card and what I look like now.

I’ve been told I look like a number of people, ranging from the bloke who does Never Mind the Buzzcocks to Frodo’s sidekick from Lord of the Rings. I can’t see it myself.

At work today, it was suggested that I shave it off for Red Nose Day. I have my doubts about this - I don’t think my messy hair is quite long, nor eccentric enough to justify such a “wacky” stunt. It’s not even as if it’s my ‘trademark’ thing that everyone knows me for. Not to mention that I’m not going to shave my hair off.

Both my dad and my grandad are bald - I want to savour my hair whilst I have the chance, and possibly use clippings to manufacture a wig should I eventually go bald. And I’d look ridiculous without any hair, anyway.

However, I do like the idea of helping poor people and briefly being the centre of attention. So I’m wondering - let’s workshop here - would anyone sponsor me for having my hair trimmed? I’m not talking anything ridiculous, I mean back to my usual self? Scissors on top and a high numbered razor on the sides. Basically the end result would be a bloke looking as he always did, which I guess would be a pretty anti-climatic. I’d even chuck in a shave if the money goes high enough.

Of course, I’d hypothetically accept Paypal donations and hypothetically film the event for the internet, if this were to hypothetically happen.

I’d love to give away a jumbo-cheque just once in my life… would any of you lot hypothetically sponsor me?

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Another Haircut
March 15th, 2006 at 20:04

I went to get my haircut again today, at the same place as before. As you might expect, the conversation was as engaging and exciting as last time.

After the obligatory “I bet you were drunk at the party the example photo was taken at” comment, the woman cutting my hair asked me what I was doing. I explained that I was currently sitting on a seat, looking into a mirror, having my hair cut, and making a very cheap gag.

I explained that I was at University studying politics, and we actually got into a light conversation about politics. It was dead interesting, in a “making the best of it”, sort of way. It was like talking to the fabled “man on the street”, the group all parties want to target as they’re so easily swayed. It was like a hands on experience at why the home office’s “We’re rock ‘ard, we are”, stance is there, and why politicians like to be seen to be “tough on terror”.

“I saw on telly that Osama Bin Laden was armed by…”

“America- Jimmy Carter then Ronald Reagan covertly funded the Mujahadeen during the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan…”

“Just goes to show you can’t trust the arabs”

This caused my eyebrows to raise and may well have skewed the cutting of the hair that was occuring at that very moment. I’ve no idea if this has caused my hair to go wrong or not, as I’ve not seen any humans who know me, to verify that I look right since I had my hair cut.

“Just nuke ‘em all”

Hooray for opinions like that! I think this is where those hippy peacenik LibDems have been going wrong: if they’d gone into the election campaign with a pledge to “Nuke” the “Arabs” (who apparently live in Afghanistan), they’d be two or three scandals into Charlie Kennedy’s Premiership by now.

Rather than go into the complexity of Middle East-West relations with her, I decided instead to divert the conversation to something she knows a lot about: “Why are you cutting at an angle?”, I asked. Apparently it’s something to do with my hair being really thick.

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Intellectual Wasteland
December 7th, 2005 at 17:17

I’ve done it again! Last night I had a shave for the first time in weeks (since I got my haircut last, in fact), and this morning I had my hair itself cut.

Now, I know what you really want to see: before and after pictures! I havn’t got any spare batteries for my camera at the moment, although you can see what happend before and after the save by clicking here.

Getting my haircut this morning was… interesting. Not wanting to tar all hair-industry employees with the same brush, but the two women in the barbers/hairdressers (not sure what gender it was aimed at) were thick as shit.

After walking in, I was immediately gestured to sit at one of the “work stations”, without even having to say “Hello. I’d like a haircut please”. I think she’d have started chopping away at my hair immediately had I not explained that I’d bought in a prop to demonstrate how I want my hair. More specifically, I’d printed out this picture. “Ooh, I bet you were a bit drunk there!”. Rather than explain that I don’t drink, and give the situation some context, I laughed along with her and said, “I can’t remember” - partially to divert the conversation onto another topic (my haircut for example), and partly to humour her. She presumably thought I was “too drunk to remember”.

As she was chopping off my lovely hair, for some reason she explained to me how her sandwich from the “caff” was getting cold (it’s okay usually as its ham, but today she had egg) and she felt sick because she was so hungry. It’s not what I want to hear from someone who’s currently moulding my appearance for the next few months- I don’t want her to rush and me to look rubbish. I’m sure my psuedo-sideburns arn’t even.

The phone rang- “I hope that’s my dad… although he’s in America… and he’ll be asleep”.

“I hate him- he keeps coming in getting me to order stuff. It’s my job to order stuff and I get into trouble when I just order one of something. I hate it when other people order stuff, that’s my job, do you know what I mean? Not unless it’s management then fair enough”.

Whilst all this was going on a couple of flat screen TVs mounted on the walls were showing one of the music channels on Sky. It was all dance music, or “R&B”.

An old bloke entered the shop about half way through, asking if “the young lad was in”. He wasn’t. “Got a better job?” “He was sacked for taking too much time off”. This seemed to get the person cutting my hair to sort of moan under her breath about one of her colleagues who’d been out for ages. I think she was telling me all of this, so I sort of politely smiled and agreed just to make sure.

In the end, it didn’t turn out two badly. Eight on ten. I’ll post pictures later.

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A picture
August 23rd, 2005 at 19:44

Here is a picture of me, with my arm round someone who’s very special to me indeed:

That’s right- I had a haircut. And a shave. It’s that exciting.

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Haircut
April 27th, 2005 at 23:59

I had my hair cut and a shave today. Here you can see the progression. From left to right: Before, in limbo post-haircut-pre-shave, and After, with the new look fully complete. I prefer the more hairy me.

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