Shave and a haircut

Two bits!

Haircut! Haircut! I got myself a haircut!

I was long overdue a haircut. My hair had gotten so long and so big a friend of mine said I looked like Henry out of the film Eraserhead. So today I decided enough was enough, I should stop putting it off, and get it cut. My typical routine when it comes to hair grooming is to let it grow really long before borrowing a pair of clippers off of someone and shaving it off. I only do this because I don't really like going to the hairdressers. If you've read one of my early posts about "small talk" you'll know why. Hairdressers generally tend to love small talk, and there is nothing wrong with that, it just means they're very social people and their job means they get to talk to loads of different people everyday.

Whenever I'm sat in those chairs it's never long before I feel uncomfortable. Particularly when I'm not really that familiar with the person cutting my hair. Back home in Northwood I found the perfect hairdresser for me. The guy is a bit of a phenomenon when it comes to hairdressing as he never says a word... ever. He doesn't do small talk, he just cuts your hair and lets you get on your way. Perfect for me. Not that it isn't a little uncomfortable being sat in his shop in total silence, save for the radio, but I feel less uncomfortable because there isn't that pressure to chat.

But today's hairdressing experience wasn't that bad actually. The guy liked to talk but he wasn't excessive with his talking like he wanted to fill every gap of silence. It didn't take me long to find myself in a comfortable conversation with him. It was just general small talk but something he told me about a friend of his was pretty interesting. He hit his head when he fell out of a tree as a kid and almost totally lost his sense of smell. This got me thinking about what it would be like losing my sense of smell.

As one of our five senses the thought of losing your sense of smell doesn't appear as horrifying as losing say your sight, hearing, or ability to feel, but it would be something quite difficult to deal with. The first most obvious thing you would lose out on is the favour of food. A persons tongue only picks up a handful of distinctive tastes, such as salty, sour, sweet, or bitter, but all the variety of flavours that exist in food come through its scent. I love my food and I would be so depressed if I couldn't taste it anymore I would probably eat far less as a result (hmmm, maybe that should make something for people with dieting problems that temporarily removes their sense of smell? - It could work).

The other thing you lose are those scents that you associate with certain memories. So many of my own memories are activated by random smells. Walking past a freshly painted fence and soaking in that smell of creosote always lightens my mood as it brings back memories of my childhood summer holidays (no I wasn't made to paint fences in my summers as a kid). Freshly cut grass brings similar feelings as well. Whenever I walk past a woman wearing a strong familiar smelling perfume it will always bring with it certain emotions. Even if I can't exactly place who the smell reminded me of there is always an emotional memory attached to it, some of them positive, some of them not.

I got curious enough about this to look it up on wikipedia and there are two slightly different conditions: Anosmia, which is a total loss of smell, and the other is Hyposmia, which is a reduced ability to smell. What I found most sad about the condition is that an anosmic person will probably never meet another person in their life with that condition, which results in them feeling perhaps slightly alienated and confused about their disability. They are probably not met with that much sensitivity or sympathy for it either as it doesn't really seem like a 'proper' disability.

... Right, I can't think of a good way to sum this post up and end it so I can go and get some other things done, so I'm not gonna bother. I'll just end it abrubtly like this: