Back By Popular Demand

Yes. You have read that rather bombastic title correctly. In order to gratify the constant requests of my regular fan-base, I have decided to resurrect my blog and attempt update it with a little more consistency.

Admittedly, when I say “Fan-base” I am actually referring to someone I bumped into in a pub. Technically more a friend than a fan, he was. And when I say “constant requests” I am referring to said friend casually asking if I’d “done any more of that blogging of late”; a telling statement also compelling me to concede the dubious credulity in claiming this fan-base is in any way “regular” (as presumably if he were, he would already be well aware whether I’d done any more of “that blogging of late”). But sadly, this is all the encouragement I need to get me going. I’ll take all the compliments I can get, no matter how tenuous - a proclamation I seem to remember also making in my last entry, hereby making “I’ll take all the compliments I can get” some kind of catchphrase. And with catchphrases like that, I bet Catherine Tate must be shitting herself.

Perhaps the reason I feel obliged to re-appropriate casual remarks as compliments is to counter-balance the off-handed insults that casually got bandied towards me that very same evening. I was out with Alan Apperley (incidentally, Alan recently released his debut novel “Indeterminable Creatures” which is rather excellent and should definitely be purchased, by you, from here. You’ve no excuse not to really). I was having an otherwise pleasant evening, when Alan’s wife suddenly asked me how old I was. For some reason, I have not yet learned my lesson, choosing once again to respond with THAT fateful question, despite the pain it always inevitably causes nowadays (and embarrassment it causes the other party – I hope). You know the one. Yes, that’s right – the one that you invariably always regret ever asking, but become too consumed by curiosity and misguided optimism to resist. Yes THAT question - the verbal equivalent of willing smacking yourself in the face with a trowel.
“Well how old do you think I am?” I ventured.
Depressingly, she punted at 36.

I know it’s my own fault, I should have known better than asking. But still, thirty-fucking-six?! Truly dismal! What makes it worse is that one would assume she has probably guessed my age then taken the obligatory few-year buffer of politeness off, meaning that to the casual observer I must have the appearance of a man knocking on the door of 40. It never used to be this way. Whenever people guessed my age whilst I was in my twenties, I would always come out as looking slightly younger than my actual age. Yet since hitting thirty, the guesses have seen a clear numerical advance in years, leading me to believe my appearance must have worryingly advanced roughly a decade in the space of 30 months. I sat for a while, zoned out of the conversation, contemplating what could have possibly aged me so much? Thankfully her husband was on-hand with an inadvertent answer though a third-party conversation he was having with someone else. They were talking about some chap or other they knew who was being referred to as “one of them baldies”, when suddenly, Alan felt the need to turn round and address me with a “no offense” gesture. I genuinely didn’t know what he was getting at, and looked over my shoulder, assuming he must have been referring to someone behind me. I regard myself as having a degree of self-awareness and whilst my head of hair is undoubtedly diminishing, I have only ever seen it as a bit of a recede, at worst a slightly limp-fronted and pervy Jack Nicholson. This was the first time I had been classified as an actual “baldy” – y’know – a proper “baldy”; so naturally my incredulity obliged me to draw attention to and consequently attempt to refute his comment. He responded by saying nothing, but merely lifting up my fringe with his hand and omitting a coy and disconcerting grin, with his stupid Tony Blair-esque face.

Well as you can imagine, the night had been ruined for me. I caught the next bus home and spent the remainder of the evening in front of the mirror, pulling my hair backwards and forwards. And I was quite shocked by how far things had gone, but I still don’t believe what I witnessed makes me a proper baldy. Were my face the character on your opponent’s card in the game “Guess Who?” and you asked if his card was a baldy and he said yes, I struggle to believe you would leave me standing beside Richard, Tom, Bill and Herman. Not just yet, anyway. Though undoubtedly, the rate of my recede now certainly makes this ‘proper baldy’ tag a strong forthcoming probability. And I have Alan to thank for this particular enlightenment. By rights I should have gone home and started TEARING HIS BLOODY NOVEL UP INTO TINY SHREDS. But I am not the type of churlish man who would allow rancor to corrupt his taste and would still recommend his novel to you, my readership , because it is genuinely brilliant. I can honestly say it is well worth the money. At the time of writing, the novel’s been out for 6 months and is currently retailing at about 24 pence on Amazon. But obviously my readership - which ostensibly consists of one reader - only looks at this blog very sporadically so by the time you get here, it might be best to check Amazon yourself to see if it’s any cheaper. Better still, why not email Alan directly and ask him to confirm Amazon’s price valuation of his work for you?

The prospect of losing my hair is not something I am particularly happy about, mainly because I am still single. And nobody can fall in love with a baldy, can they? It just doesn’t really happen. Sure, you see baldies who are married. It’s not that a baldy can’t be loved because you do see them around, all married and stuff. Quite brazenly married too, with their shiny heads and all. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world. But I believe it is an evolutionary measure rather than a coincidence, that most baldies become baldies at certain age, when they have had a sporting chance to entrap a mate. So a lot of them are already safely married before they have the audacity to fully recede. And by this time, their respective partners just learn to live with it; ideally seeing past the desolate cranium, able to appreciate the security, life aspirations, history, trust and love which has developed between them in the interim. Or at the very least, viewing balding as a flimsy premise to end a relationship, consequently feeling obligated to stick with their baldy to the bitter end as an act of compassion, in the same way they might do had their husband fallen foul to a debilitating illness, or disfiguring accident. Either way, the point is that I don’t have that luxury. And the last thing I need is yet another obstacle to hinder my already moribund sex life. The only consolation being that at least my baldy gene will not receive the opportunity to get passed on to any poor, unwitting offspring. Evolution always finds a way.

So here I am again, back by popular demand.
Basically mourning the fact that the same can’t be said about my hair.