Onset of age ensures thereÕs no escaping the bald facts

Date Published: {J}

With trees, you tell their age by the rings on the bark – with men, it’s the proportion of time at the barber’s, divided between cutting the hair on your head, and trimming the hairs expanding like a wild bush up your nose, in your ears and on your eyebrows.

Unless you’re a proponent of the Bobby Charlton comb over, you can reconcile yourself to the reality that eventually the haircut will take one-third of the time and the ears, nose and eyebrows will be the highlight of your visit.

One of the things they should ban in barber’s is the rear view mirror; it doesn’t matter how the cut has turned out at the back because you get such a fright when you see the ever expanding bald patch that you think you’re looking at a picture of some old guy’s head.

And by the time you realise it’s your own head, the mirror is either back on its hook – in which case you’ve no idea how your head looks to those walking behind you – or you’re so traumatised by the moon surface that has replaced the thatch.

All of this evolving process towards baldness has more downsides than vanity; and the biggest one concerns suncream. You’ve a choice between wearing a baseball cap or smothering the back of your head in cream which makes it look like a seagull has deposited its entire lunch on top of you.

Of course there’s the odd deluded bald man whose brain has vanished even faster than his hair – I saw such a guy during the recent hot spell in Salthill, wearing a visor to keep the sun out of his eyes, utterly oblivious to the burning he was getting on top.

Thankfully in recent times, not alone has any stigma about baldness vanished, but it’s actually quite macho to have no hair – think of Keith Wood, the Mitchell brothers in Eastenders, Bruce Willis…Homer Simpson.

All of this was brought into focus by the recent appearance of the Human League at the Galway Arts Festival and for those who remember Phil Oakey and his outfit from the eighties, their current image was quite a shock.

Back in the day, Phil had the strangest haircut on the planet; short on one side, long and hanging over his face on the other as if the hairdresser had fled the shop because of a sudden fire in the middle of the operation.

These days Phil has no such issues with barbers because he’s as bald as the proverbial coot – and it suits him. Plus he can see his audience out of both eyes these days which has to be a bonus.

The biggest mistake that men make is to cover up their losses – the comb over looks ridiculous on any day but when the wind it out, it looks like its owner is being attacked by a hairy octopus.

Lashing it down to the bonce with Brycream is another no no – you should only grease up that much if you’re planning to swim the Irish Sea – and you’ll destroy every shirt and suit you own with the gel free flowing down your shoulders.

You could wear a cap, like Jackie Healy Rea and all of his sons – which shows the ultimate loyalty to a father given that most of them have all their hair still – but that means you look silly indoors when you cannot take it off, either because you don’t want to or you can’t because it’s super-glued to your head.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.