Haircut and a shave

Today I went back to Hound of the Baskervilles for a haircut and a beard trim; it's been almost six weeks since I last addressed the hair on my head, and in the warm humidity of Singapore it grows quickly.

Beard trim at the Mandarin Oriental

It’s been at least four weeks, and my beard has been getting increasingly bushy, so I went for a trim at the Mandarin Oriental.

The barbers there run the gamut from completely silent, to overly voluble, to calmly competent. A lot of this depends on your personal taste, and while I don’t think that a barber shop needs to be as silent as a library or a grave, there are times when there’s too much chatter.

For example, when you’re having a man use scissors on something attached to your face, you don’t want him to be laughing. I’ve nothing against happiness, but an excess of hilarity when somebody is making minute adjustments to my moustache does not leave me feeling particularly secure. A laughing barber is not as worrying as a bald one, but all the same I’d prefer somebody who was clearly concentrating on the task in hand. So no conversations about holidays, or sport, or anything else. It’s not like you’d want a brain surgeon to be gabbling away a hundred miles to the minute while he dug around in your head, and I value my face almost as much as my brain.

Unexpected pain

My beard needs a trim. I know this because every time I take a swig from this can of tepid Carlsberg, a few of the hairs from my moustache get trapped in the top of the can and are torn out.

It's aversion therapy for hairy alcoholics.