Friend, do YOU get nervous "ahead of" (no pun intended!!!!) your next haircut, when you see it getting relentlessly nearer and nearer on your phone's 'calendar'?
Most people do get a mild case of the shivers as the day approaches, don't they, and none more so, locally, than this guy from nearby Farleigh Wallop, Hampshire, who, incidentally, asked those hard-working local Onion News journalists not to name him, so I'm not going to name him either [because you don't know his name, Colin, do you! - Ed]
Speaking personally I'm certainly dreading MY next appointment in the barber's chair, and it must be coming up soon: my last visit was in 1964, would you believe, so after 61 years, I'm probably now seriously overdue for another session, to put it mildly (!).
And if this is what you're thinking, no, I'm not Robinsons Crusoe, or anybody resembling him, I'm happy to say!
Too mean with money to pay a professional, I realised long ago (famously in our family!) that it's possible to give myself a sensational result doing my own "self-shearing" with just a mirror or two to aid me! And what I always say is - the way that my hair looks today after 61 years speaks for itself!
[Yes, but not in the way you seem to think, Colin! - Ed]
Funnily enough [I'll be the judge of that! - Ed], these days, now that I'm in my medium-to-late 70's, I find myself in the barber's chair every 6 weeks, still without getting a hair on my head touched, not with anything sharp, anyway!!!
"How do you manage that, Colin?", I hear you cry! [Not me, I've gone to get a cup of tea while this bit of the blog's being written! - Ed]
Well, seeing as how you're obviously "gagging" to know (!), here's the thing. My medium-to-long suffering wife Lois gets her hair cut every 6 weeks now, at Liphook's fashionable "Haircraft" Salon.
Liphook, Hampshire's fashionable "Haircraft" Salon
The salon doesn't have a designated "waiting area" for an accompanying husband / wife / current "squeeze" or whatever. So they sit you down at the nearest vacant "station", and you get almost the equivalent of a ringside seat as Anna, one of the salon's bevy of young stylists, gives a "shearing" to your "significant other", which is nice!
I brave the barber's chair (right), without anybody hurting a hair on my head,
as Lois's hair-stylist Anna 'styles' my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois (left)
Lois is particularly interested today in having the hair over her ears trimmed, because last week she was fitted with some shiny new hearing-aids, which have to be taken out when she gets into bed, and charged up in a little "pod", like all our other modern appliances - phones, shavers etc.
Sometimes she forgets, and her new shorter hair will certainly make my life easier whenever she asks me to help "get them off her", to put it mildly!
Lois showcases her new shorter hair style during our post-haircut
walk through Liphook's fashionable Radford Park, looking for
signs of spring before stopping for a rest on the Nigel Marr Memorial Bench
When my dear late mother was alive, 20 years ago, Lois and I, then still very much a working couple, both with full-time jobs, used to smile when my mother said she'd had a busy day, because she'd had, say, two things to do.
flashback to 1999: us when we were both still working full time,
pictured here at our daughter Alison's wedding, in the Cotswold Hills,
just outside Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Now that we've been retired - for 19 years now incredibly, Lois and I say exactly the same thing as my mother used to say, would you believe!!!!
Yes, we've got two things on the calendar today, and, what's worse, for our second appointment today I'm not just a spectator, because we've both got to have our eyes tested, and then we both have to have a lot of money taken out of our bank accounts, which is by far the most painful part of the procedure (!). I resist asking for an anaesthetic, though - I'm going to be brave, I say haha (!).
(left) us waiting to have our eyes tested, and (right)
me looking after Lois's coat etc, while she gets "done" - oh dear!!!
A frustrating day again, also, with another online delivery that doesn't quite work. Lois and I moved into our home in Liphook only 2 months ago, on January 3rd, and there are, like, a billion things - more than a billion, probably (!), that we need to buy, to make the house the way we like it.
Today, the shiny new lawn-mower I ordered, which was supposed to arrive tomorrow, managed to arrive a day early, with no warning email, just while we were at the Aircraft Hair Salon,
Thanks, Fedex !!!!!
(left) flashback to October 2024: Lois in the back garden the day we first viewed
our new house in the company of James the Estate Agent (visible through the patio door),
and (right), the message left today by the Fedex delivery guy, after he tries to deliver
our shiny-new lawnmower a day early, without even an email to warn us
- what madness !!!!!
Yes, incredibly there are still some trainlines in the world that Michael hasn't travelled on yet, seemingly.
And this is after, like, a billion series of his "Continental/Australian/American etc Train Journeys" - more than a billion, probably!
For his current series Michael is in the Balkans, and Lois and I think that his myriad "train-travelogues" must have been shown all over Europe, because people seem to recognise him, and stare at him wherever he goes - and not just for his orange / purple etc trousers, might I add !!!!
[A myriad isn't quite a billion, though, is it, Colin. Don't exaggerate and just try to get your figures right for once, in time for next week. Is it a billion, or only a myriad? Just saying! - Ed]
Croatia is a country with place names like "Split" and "Pag" that look as if they've been made up as a joke - and it's also a country that once wrote its language in an alphabet that looks like a child thought it up, but I'm going to let that one slide for the moment till I've got more time to do a proper study (!).
But back to tonight's programme !!!
This current series of Michael's "Great Continental Train Journeys" is given added poignancy by the fact that Michael was Defence Secretary in the John Major Government of the 1990's. He visited the Balkans several times in an official capacity during the region's bloody civil wars of 30 years ago, and we see him tonight taking obvious pleasure in seeing the area again, this time at peace.
Croatia, where he is tonight, is a fiercely Roman Catholic country, but it's a Catholic country with a difference, at least from a historical viewpoint.
Lois and I didn't know that, whereas in the Catholic world generally Popes stubbornly refused, until fairly recently, to allow believers to worship in any language other than Latin, the Pope made an exception for Croatia, as far back as the 13th century.
Lois and I are calling this Michael's "Croat Face". It's similar, but not 100% identical, to what-we-call his "Koala face", the face we remember from a programme in a previous train journey series of his, from long ago - do you remember, Friends?
And see now two of the other most famous Koala faces, included for comparison purposes:
flashback to 2019: Michael shows viewers his "koala face" during one of
his televised epic train journeys through Victoria, Australia
(left) flashback to 2011: Sheldon Cooper off the French language version of
US comedy The Big Bang Theory, and (right) Lois on our first trip to Australia in 2016
Have YOU got a photo of YOUR 'koala-face', Friends?
I bet if you all sent them in to me, stuck to postcards, I'd be able to fulfil a lifelong ambition - a Koala Face Museum. Incredibly, Liphook hasn't got one yet - a gap in the market if ever there was one!
I wonder....!
Finally, and again included mainly for comparison purposes, here's that Koala's "Michael face":
included for comparison purposes: a koala's Michael-face.
[That's enough silly faces! - Ed]
Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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