simont | (no subject)

(no subject)

Oh dear. I think people are going to point and laugh at me for a couple of weeks.

Ever since I got my hair cut short three months ago, I've been maintaining it myself with clippers. This has already paid for itself in barber charges, I reckon, and is generally very convenient.

Unfortunately, it does mean I have to keep my mind on the job. To pick an example purely at random: if you cut most of the hair, take the comb thing off the clippers to tidy up the edges, then notice there's a bit at the top you missed, you need to be awake enough to remember to put the comb back on before you go over that bit again.

As a result I now have a small bald spot on one side of my head, which will take a week or two to grow back to a sensible length. Until then I will be forced to look extremely silly, and short of wearing a hat all the time there's nothing I can do about it. :-/

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People were already saying "here comes the gestapo" when you emerged from the night yesterday, a suitable hat would therefore be ideal....

I've never understood that. Surely not only secret police can ever have wanted to shield their legs as well as their torso from the cold and wind? How come there's this universal connection made between long black coats and the Gestapo in particular?

Anyway, a hat might work OK when walking around outdoors, but it would look a bit odd indoors. Ho hum.

Perhaps under a totalitarian state, the general citizenry are not permitted clothing which might enable them to hide such dangerous things as weapons, printing presses, or a suitcase full of false indentity papers.

In which case, those who enforce the will of the state will be the only people who can wear these clothes. And the public know this. And the secret police know that the public know this. So they wear long clothes to deliberately strike the jaheebies into the hearts of their victims^Wsuspects.

Or maybe it's a status symbol... they simply wear long clothes because they can, and normal mortals can't. A bit like African bureaucrats who insist on having two or more phones on their desk.

Fair enough. And if I'd lived in Nazi-era Germany then I might perfectly well still have that instictive fear of people wearing long coats.

But I've never lived in Germany, or in the Nazi era, let alone both at once, and this is also true of almost everyone else I associate with; out here in the free world we've always been able to wear coats of whatever colour and length we feel like (except in American high schools recently, which also doesn't apply to many of my friends). So I'm sure that isn't the whole story of why we instantly associate long black coats with the Gestapo. I'm still puzzled.

Watching too many episodes of 'Allo 'Allo?

It's not just the clothing, but how it's worn, and how the person moves. You do look quite sinister walking around in that coat...

Do what I did last week when my roots turned blonde instead of the desired dark brown.
Take a mascara brush in the nearest colour to your hair and touch the scalp in.
Make sure it's a waterproof one though :-)

Ah, my sympathy. I simply don't tidy up the edges; now I'm even less likely to try that!

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