Louis Michael: A hirsute resolution

You’d be surprised how much of an effect having long hair can have on your life. I remember on a train journey I took when I was much younger, coming back with my family from a day trip to London, I was transfixed by the long hair of a man in the same carriage. I don’t know what it was about the hairstyle at that point that left me so enraptured but I remember vowing to myself there and then that I would never cut my hair again until it was long and luscious and swishable.

Fast forward a few vow-breaking years to January 2014 and we see the declaration of the same vow. However this time it was made especially sacred by the allowance of magical commitment fairy dust you get with every new year’s resolution. Hold down that fast forward button one more time and here we are three years later with three years worth of hair hanging from my noggin.
No big deal right? Wrong.

It turns out growing your hair is more of a trial that I ever could have imagined. Firstly there’s the self inflicted hell of the awkward in-between phase where it’s all you can do just to stop yourself from looking like you jam your fingers in plug sockets for fun. Fortunately rather early on I discovered the blessing that is hats, so my eternal bad hair day was locked away under cap and key.

I remember vowing to myself that I would never cut my hair again

Then there was my personal discovery that unbeknownst to me my hair had been curly all my life, it had just never been given the chance to strut its ringlets. Although an intriguing realisation, now I was faced with the prospect of waiting twice as long for my Baywatch hair swish moment! And eventually, after blagging that a hat really can go with every single one of my outfits, and failing to find anything that converted frizz into ringlets, I was faced with the final hurdle: conviction.

After two long years of getting up in the morning and being greeted in the mirror by an asylum escapee you begin to question why you’re doing this to yourself. Truth be told, I came incredibly close to lopping the whole thing off. I was just so tempted by the idea of a life without shampoo and conditioner and a never ending rotation of mousses and serums that could allegedly control the demon that lived on my scalp.

But like a marathoner who hits the wall and breaks through I resisted the final temptation, and that first Baywatch hair swish was worth every moment of bad hair day torture.