I can't remember the last time I combed my hair...

 Grooming. It’s a word that always reminds me of pets - and for good reason: there are pet grooming shops springing up everywhere, places where dogs can go for a haircut and a shampoo and set. I think dogs are the most popular customers of these establishments, cats wouldn’t tolerate such nonsense and besides, they groom themselves and cover up their mess after they’ve taken a dump. Unlike dogs. Although, that said, I once looked after somebody else’s cat, going by the name of Biscuit (it was the colour of a ginger nut). It managed to dump all over my bedroom, leaving little piles of unmentionable things dotted across the floor. After that he was banned, no longer wanted, and we returned him to his rightful owner double quick.

But enough about animals. I’ve never kept a pet, apart from that disastrous week with Biscuit. I mean, it’s not as if he was grateful. When we went to see him a few weeks later, he ignored us. They say cats go where the milk is, and we were no longer providing it. He’s probably dead now.

So, grooming. I can’t remember the last time I combed my hair. There was a time, long ago, when combing my hair was something I did every morning. Combs are awful things and need frequent cleaning or they pick up dandruff, and I soon realised that combing my hair was ineffective. It’s fine for, say, five or six minutes, but soon it gets out of control and I’d have to use the comb again. I used to carry one with me, but that was when my hair was not like it is today. I never had a really short hair cut, it was always, ‘half an inch of the top and tidy up the sides and back’, always something complicated, not like it is today. It’s been about two or three weeks since I last had a haircut and it was a simple request: ‘number three all over’ and that was it, out comes the razor and hey presto! Within five minutes I look like a prisoner of war.

The great thing about a short haircut is I don’t need a comb and when it starts to get long, I just get another haircut. When it does get longer I start to look awful and I have to scrunch it with a towel after showering so that it kind of stays in shape - unless the wind blows and then I start to look a little eccentric. The last thing I need is a comb because I don’t have a parting, like I used to when I was at school.

What’s next? Ah, yes! Shoes. There was a time, again when I was much younger, when shoes needed to be polished daily. I remember my dad with his black boot polish, his brushes and that lovely smell downstairs in the kitchen. My dad’s shoes shone back at me and soon, when I was old enough, I had to polish my own shoes. Dad went through a stage of wearing suede shoes - Hush Puppies no less. He used to clean them with a ‘suede brush’, a kind of wire brush, and, for some reason, he used to put a kettle on, let it boil and then hold the shoes, one at a time, over the steam coming out of the spout. This always intrigued me, but I never owned a pair of Hush Puppies and, in later life, when I did find myself with a pair - my ‘Lincoln Biscuits’  - so-called because they resembled the eponymous biscuit, I didn’t use a suede brush or a kettle. In fact, I stuck little green pins all around the sides of both shoes. I thought I looked cool, but I was wrong. So wrong.

These days, I don’t polish my shoes. Sometimes that’s because they’re designed not to be polished. That’s what I tell myself: that distressed look. But then I start to feel guilty and I reach for the polish and feel kind of relieved afterwards because I know I won’t have to do it again for a few weeks. Right now I’m the proud owner of a pair of blue shoes. How do you polish blue shoes? There’s black polish, brown, ‘tan’ but not blue. So far they haven’t been polished, but I wear them so infrequently it doesn’t really matter. Perhaps I should wait until my hair grows and starts to look eccentric, then put on the blue shoes, but then again, perhaps not. You see, I haven’t told you about my (ahem) my eccentric walk. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not THAT bad, but add longish greying hair and a pair of blue shoes and, quite frankly, it’s not a good look. “Stop lunging forward on your left leg,” was my dad’s advice when I was younger and when I tried I looked as if I’d had an accident. So, on the walking front, I’ve given up. So what if I bob along the road, so what I have what somebody once described as a ‘sailor’s saunter’? My silly walk is me, pure and simple, there’s nothing I can do about, I’ve just got to live with it, but perhaps I shouldn’t make it worse for myself by wearing attention-grabbing shoes while sporting an unkempt head of hair.

Oddly, my mum likes my hair when it’s longer. I find this annoying because I much prefer it when it’s solitary confinement short. In fact, perhaps I should cultivate that lifer look, get a blue and white striped shirt and jeans and a cheap pair of white prison-issue trainers. I don’t know, but short hair is great because that awful word ‘grooming’ doesn’t come into it. 

Lastly, on the subject of grooming, what about pressing trousers? That was something that used to be a weekly chore and it invariably led to a double crease, but not any more. Gone are the days of pressing trousers too. I can’t remember the last time I used an iron, apart from pressing shirts, although, at the moment I don’t need to press shirts because I always wear a V-necked jumper over them. Having said that, it’s now the summer and soon the jumper will come off and the shirts will need pressing. I don’t mind pressing shirts. Well, I do mind, but it has to be done.

But then I begin to think how sharp I’d look if I pressed my trousers, combed my hair instead of cutting it short, pressed my shirts and polished my shoes. Sharp? No, I’d look stupid and contrived and not really me. Life’s too short to worry about stuff like this.