"Mum, when did my dad start going bald?"
Monday and I've just been to the barber. You can tell because I am now sunk in my usual post-haircut funk. It's the result of the fact I've just been shown the back of my head again. There's a little thinning patch there. I can't feel it so most of the time I can pretend it's not there. But that's not possible when the barber shows me the reverse view in the mirror.
My mum is sitting on the prom in Portstewart with my sister Julie when I call. It's a beautiful day on Northern Ireland's north coast. In Glasgow it's grey and miserable. A bit like me.
The pair of them burst out laughing when they hear my question. "Oh, he just started noticing after Dean was born," Mum says when she finally recovers [1]. "Dean's 28 now, so 27 years ago or thereabouts? When your dad would have been in his early fifties."
"The age I am now."
"That's about right."
"Great."
I can hear the pair of them cackling away down the phone. "Well, after that reassurance I'll leave you to the sun," I say [2].
When I was younger I hated my hair so much that I rather liked the idea of going bald. I didn't know any better. I used to think that if I started to thin on top that would give me the excuse to shave it all off and thereafter not have to think about my hair and how it looked. I would no longer have to rub industrial-strength gloop through it every morning in an attempt to find what might laughably be called a style.
It took me until my thirties before I realised I didn't have to wait. So I shaved it off. A number two razor all over. Apart from the fact it meant the back of my head felt like whippet fur, nobody much cared for the result but me. So eventually I started to grow it again.
Now I'm in a different position. Now the idea of following my dear departed father into male pattern baldness appears to be changing from a potential event to something that appears inevitable. And it turns out the reality isn't as much fun as the fantasy. I have suddenly realised I have foolishly invested some of my sense of self in the fact that I might have a fine head of hair. That's the bald truth of it.
Though now that I come to think about it, fine isn't even necessary. I'll settle for any hair at all in five years' time.
"Will you still love me when I'm bald?" I ask J later.
"Depends on what shape your head is," she says.
So now I've started to worry about the shape of my occipital ridge.
[1] Dean is my nephew. Julie's son. He's a tattooist now. If you're ever in Belfast ...
[2] They probably went for an ice-cream in Morelli's too. Not that I'm jealous or anything.
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