I can't afford my hair. I mean, my haircuts are pretty cheap. Number three at the back and sides, not too much off the top, just chop into it. Leave the sideburns, a natural fade into the neck. Yes, you can do the eyebrows, but I'll deal with the nasal hair in a less public forum. Twenty quid, including tip. I'm usually out of there in twenty minutes. No complaints about that. My Kurdish gentleman delivers. I know the price of women's hairdressing is...high.
But it's the hair maintenance that's the nightmare. Again, I'm not competing with the ladies here. You're endlessly taxed for trying to look good. I know. I too would like to look good. I just want to be presentable. And it used to be easy. When I was young, it was a quick Bic disposable and whatever bottle was next to the shower, and I was good to go. I looked great, too. Like you do, when you're young and you don't appreciate it. But now I'm old. And nothing I do will ever make me look great again. Old age is flinging buckets of glitter like a circus clown as small fires break out all over your body. Eventually it's not funny. The glitter does nothing. It may be carcinogenic.
I never used to have dandruff, but now I'm old and white and desiccated like the 70's dog poo of legend. I looked into why dog poos used to be white and now aren't. It's bonemeal. Dogs used to eat more bones and have more bone in their dog food. That's the boring answer. Gnasher, Dennis the Menace's dog from
The Beano, and a hoarder of juicy bones? Still doing the crumbly albino shits. But he's a dying breed. Hopefully not literally - that's a bit real for
The Beano.
For years I used Head and Shoulders. It's an anti-dandruff shampoo. It's THE anti-dandruff shampoo. The clue's in the name. I liked the smell. I liked the colour. But suddenly, it stopped working, and the flakes built up like alluvial silt. What had brought about this change? Me. I had reached the next level of decrepitude. I was falling apart, skin cell by skin cell. So, I took it up a notch. Nutragena Therapeutic Shampoo. T-Gel. The daddy. It worked. The bracing smell of coal tar saw off the dandruff like an angry, smelly dog. For a few months, a few blissful, clean-shouldered months, I could go about my day with confidence, not having to worry about leaving half my epidermis trailing behind me like a bride's train.
Then they stopped making it.
Cheers.
You fucking cowards.
I tried the insipid non-therapeutic Nutragena. Yeah, it's bollocks. It does nothing. Might as well be Timotei. I moved on to Nizoral, which comes in a tube like wood glue, and I'd heard good things about. It's alright. It's no T Gel, but it holds back the tide of granulated Higgins for a day or so. I wasn't satisfied. I'm now trying the endgame boss: Polytar Scalp Shampoo. It has a 4% coal tar solution. It's a fire hazard. It's only to be used once or twice a week. It calls itself a "medicine". It's not suitable for children under 12. They just can't handle it. It comes in a defiantly unsexy brown plastic bottle. It looks like vintage Tropical Sun cream. There's not even a picture of the bottle on the box, just the words: Polytar Scalp Shampoo Coal tar solution 4% in brown on white. It is defiantly unsexy. No marketeer has finessed its packaging in fifty years.
It bodes well.
Polytar. Lots of tar. Like the hull of a dinghy. And when did you ever see dandruff on the hull of a dinghy?
I'll find out what happens.
Still, four bottles of shampoo in a month.
And don't get me started on razor blades. Because I have written extensively about them elsewhere. A tax. A fucking tax on the hirsute gentleman who doesn't suit a beard...
Gillette: the most expensive a man can get.
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