Let Every E'en Be Hallow

LESS ME, FATHER, for I have sinned. It has been fifteen days since my last confession. Clearly too long, for the Lord has seen fit to visit His terrible wit upon me:

I woke up this morning <twang> Ah say ah woo-ke up thismaw-awnin, yeah
Woke UP this morning
Ah had Senator Tre-yent Lott, Mississippi, <dan. dan. daaaah>
S-s-s-Stuck! <whoop>
Stuck awn ma heeeeee-ad. <lick type="sorrowful">

Woke up this morning; showered; looked in the mirror; saw a stranger staring back. Somehow, by some arcane malevolent magic, I find myself today with Trent Lott hair. Take a picture of Senator Lott, scribble a bloatee upon it, that's me, that is. Oddly enough the picture trick does not work the other way: take a photo of me, Bearded, scratch away the hairy chin you will not see Senator Trent Lott: you will see Peter Griffin, Family Guy, for I am of the Ass-chin, for which we have invented the smiley "<:-3)))". Shave my beard, shave away the years, and reveal one of the "fat, wheezy boys with a note from Matron", as Blackadder's General Melchitt used to say, in all his dismal glory. My wife insisted once. Only ever that One Time.

But what the nine-ringed hell is up with my hair? Where did that come from? I'm always distracted by Senatorial hair-styles whenever they appear on television: the contrived awfulness of them, that the erstwhile wise men of the Senate would spend big bucks to shape with delicate care such mundane coiffs; a symbol of the humiliation to be endured in the pursuit of power? Then here am I, stripping fingers one time only through shower-soaked hair, real hair, my hair, to arrive at that look au-naturelle that screams false calls of Syrup!

I must, however grudgingly, accept that as a man grows older so does the vibrant radicalism of his youth foul into stoney-faced conservativism. Experience sadly bears this out; but I had not expected, nor was I prepared for, any physical dimension to that transition: that in addition to the aging, the graying of the corpus there should be a blueing of it too? I mean, one's hair just should not meld that way on its own.

I like to keep my hair short and sharp - finger-wide and spikey - but my wife, bless her, She prefers it longer, about this length, at which it begins to curl and drive me crazy. Normally it would curl, that is: but not today. Today it is a shelf. My first thought is to blame the cutter, the hairdresser. You'd think a "Number Three with short spikes on top" would somehow always turn-out the same way, regardless of who cuts it? I don't think it does: oh, surely looks the same immediately afterwards, but like chaotic butterflies in China, teeny tiny variations at the cutface yield vastly different results a month or so down the road. One month it might grow long and scruffy, curled at the edges. Another it grow awkwardly top-heavy, shooting bushy outgrowths like a frightened erazorhead. This month, clearly, and rather unforgivably, it has Lotted.

Trent Lotted.

Were I a superstitious fellow - and I am - I might be drawn to a more sinister explanation. I would read into this development a creepy parallel with the novel I happen to be reading this week: for I am enmeshed in my second attempt at deciphering The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. I tried to read it once before, many years ago when the book was first published, but had to set it aside on the usual grounds of being too thick to read it; in the forlorn hope that I might make more sense of it with a couple more years under my belt? Alas, not: I remain baffled, though still manage to derive great pleasure from it.

It's two central characters are Bollywood legend Gibreel Farishta - a faithless actor renowned for playing deities in movies - and a home-loathing expatriate anglophile, Saladin Chamcha, noted voice actor, a veritable Harry Shearer whose voices are known and loved by millions but whose face is unknown. As the novel opens they are strapped in their seats, plummeting towards the english coast from 30,000 feet after their hi-jacked plane has exploded. They do not die, but rather are reborn: the one Farishta taking the attributes of an angel, an avatar of Gabriel; the other, poor Chamcha, lumped with the horns and hairy-legged cloven feet, and halitosis of Beelzebub. Although I admit of no explanation for the metaphallical significance of these metamorphoses and adventures, it nevertheless struck me they were wrong: he whom I should have thought a demon became instead an angel, and vice-versa? "All Higgelty-piggelty", as one of his marvellous indian characters might explain. There is a name for that special brand of english spoken in the Indian sub-continent, though it escapes me: something akin to "Engrish", but clearly not. It's distinguishing characteristic is the free incorporation of phrases straight out of Bertie Wooster and other PG Wodehouse creations? The kind of fruitbits those old scallywags at the Drone Club would bowl around the old wicket in the thirties, what?

No graceful decline into Harry Reid-dom for me, it would seem; but rather like the novel - perhaps because of the novel - I am become Beelzebub Lott.

Bugger. It takes me forever to finish a book.


(Look here for some more portraits)