HAIR

Hair! What is it?

Well, for some it is their pride and joy, their crowning glory – for others it is just a memory!

We all start out with a certain amount of it – peach fuzz all over at birth ranging through to a head full of fine tresses. I have known a couple of babies who had their first haircuts at 2 weeks old and others who don’t qualify till two years old. There is a belief – true or false – that if a woman suffers severe heartburn during pregnancy that her baby will be born with a head full of hair. As we know, lots of strange beliefs abound when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth.

Some spend many hours and even more dollars caring for their hair only to have it disappear over time – finding it on their pillows, coat collars and in their hair brushes until they are left with the monk’s tonsure and the handful of long hairs that they comb over in an unsuccessful attempt to bridge the gap. My own sons declared their hair (what was left of it) inadequate to protect their scalp from sunburn, so they both now shave their heads and wear back to front baseball caps instead.

A long time barber in Bega used to have a board in his window showing prices ranging from haircut and shave combo right down the list till it came to the last price which was “Search fee – 1 beer.” As his clientele was mostly the older residents like himself who only wanted basic trims and nothing fancy, he tended to get more and more search fees and eventually closed his shop and spent his time in the pub.

His original price board was on the back wall of his shop and showed prices starting at 1/6 for a full cut through to 3d for a child’s trim. When he closed his business after sixty years, he was still the cheapest in town with $19 for a full cut and $9 for a child’s trim. His grandson reopened the shop a month later and did a thriving business with prices starting at $25 for a basic cut for men right through to $350 for extensions. When I left Bega nearly 4 years ago, he was moving into larger premises and had an apprentice as well as 2 trainees to assist him and his two fully trained assistants.

Over the years, dreadful things have been done to hair- recall the beehives of some years ago when hair was teased (now called back-combed) to within an inch of its life then piled high and drenched with gallons of hairspray to keep it high and stiff so it resembled a motorbike helmet. Some of the ‘swirled and curled’ styles we see on race-days with or without hats and fascinators seem to defy gravity. Once can only wonder at the holding power of hair spray. Dreadlocks made an appearance (fortunately brief although there are still some around) as did the fine braiding that takes many hours and now usually marks those who have recently holidayed in Bali. The mullet, made famous by the likes of John Farhnam, Billy Ray Cyrus and Andre Agassi, seems to have mostly disappeared although I rather liked it as it was mostly tidy.

Back in the days of Oliver Cromwell, we see pictures of men with the most glorious heads of curly hair – I find myself wondering occasionally what they did when the baldness gene kicked in. It is said that Queen Liz 1 was completely bald and wore a variety of wigs – true or not, what does it matter.

As one of my sons once said “hair may come and hair may go, but bald goes on forever.”