Colm O'Regan: Men! Can't cut your hair? Just rock the Ted Danson look
All the Irish men of a certain vintage now have big, grey hair; big, bushy, grey clouds that haven't been seen in decades, and certainly none that developed in such a short space of time.
If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere. Seamus Heaney only said this the once, in 1972. And then everyone else said it in 2020. Heaney was talking about cattle in winter fields waiting patiently for the next thing to come along. Unfortunately, we haven't read the small print. Winter turned out to mean: Winter, spring, summer, autumn, winter, winter again (if you believe the winter before Christmas to be a different winter to the one after Christmas), and then spring again, because we didn't winter properly the last time.
Meanwhile, 'summer anywhere' now means 'summer anywhere as long as it’s here'.
There are lots of serious side effects to this newly extended lockdown.
But one revelation has been all the Irish men of a certain vintage who now have big, grey hair; big, bushy, grey clouds that haven't been seen in decades, and certainly none that developed in such a short space of time.
Young people have always grown their hair differently, of course, depending on fashion. But that's because they were goddamn hippies and commies, tree huggers and beat poets, getting high off my dime while I worked in the auto shop, with no one to help me but my memories of Korea.
And now, with no end in sight, we really don't know where our next haircut is coming from. Well, some do. But for most of us, even if there was someone in the house who could cut it, you wouldn't want to be appearing with too good a haircut. It's the equivalent of that one gang-member who, straight after the heist, arrives in a Lamborghini to the house in which he was raised, even though the ringleader warned people not to draw attention to themselves. Because everyone is asking: Where did you get that?
Lockdown almost has the effect of an indirect sumptuary law. The sumptuary laws were brought in centuries ago to stop people getting clothes above their station. They were also used here in the 16th century to stop the English settlers adopting the Irish hairstyle. The Irish hairstyle was called a glib and according to noted historical langer and lick-arse Edmund Spenser, consisted of "a long, curled bush of hair, hanging down over the eye, and monstrously disguising them, which are both very bad and hurtful". This element of disguise made the Irish appear untrustworthy and the English settlers were, therefore, forbidden to look like a shoe-gazing band.
It's the opposite now.
And there are a lot of men who are now thickening on top, men who wouldn't normally have any truck with that much hair.
Short-back-and-sides men, who have spent a large part of their life looking for a lost wrench next to a broken harrow in a bitingly cold February field, now run their calloused hands through their luxuriant new waves, like a French nouvelle vague director on the set of his existential epic, .
These newly bouffanted men turn up in the background of Zoom calls at the 'Would you like to speak to your father?' section. Your mother moves to one side and the next thing, Ted Danson heaves into view to ask if you're going to bother taxing the car now, at this stage.
And me? Let's just say that when I see a hair-bobble on the floor during the 7 o'clock floor-toy sweep, I pocket it. There's a lot more wintering to be done.
