I'm only relating all this because among the questions in this most recent email, he says: "I need a brief history of your hairstyles." To which my inner King Lear kind of says, "O reason not the need... but in your case I'll make an exception." Nonetheless, it seems that this might be a request that, peculiar though it is, might be entertainingly dealt with here at the customer service counter of Thompson's. It still won't quite make me the Dennis Cooper of Stoke Newington, but these things don't happen overnight...
I had a history teacher, once, in sixth form, who would sing to me, after the fashion of Betty Boo, thus: "Chrissy Goo, Chrissy Goo just doin' the doo". (...It's honestly only just struck me how extremely curious that is.) Anyway, here, for your delectation, David, and to tickle your xiphoid process while you chow down on tonight's pork variant, is a brief survey of some of the do's that I have, in my time, done. Those of a sensitive disposition should look away now, the following contains scenes of mild peril.

It took me ages to figure out who I remind myself of in that photo, and I'm not quite sure I'm right even now, but look at those glasses, the slightly lopsided smile... Do I not, perhaps, put one a little in mind of the young Stephen Hawking?

Damn, I had real piano chops in those days. I can still find my way around, but technically I'm nowhere near match fit -- which is a horrible loop to get into, of course: my fingers can't keep up with my head, or with themselves even, and this is immensely frustrating and upsetting, and the discipline to put the requisite work in therefore becomes harder and harder to marshal.
Nonetheless, while my chord voicings may have been saying McCoy Tyner, from the scalp up I am clearly saying David Mellor, and this is therefore officially not "close enough for jazz".
Incidentally, it would have been at around this time that I strayed from Anthony and Anne-Marie, presenting myself at a trendier salon on Queens Road. Lord, it was terrifying. They wanted to know if I'd "like gel" -- which, at the time, was patently a bit like asking a terminally ill man if he'd like to buy a raffle ticket.

More significantly, though: look, mom! No hair! It's the end of my first year at university and I've just finished performing as the eponymous not-quite-hero in my own adaptation of Gogol's Diary of a Madman: the first devised piece I ever directed, and probably in some ways still one of the best. The character is admitted to an asylum towards the end of the story and his head is shaved. First attempts at creating this effect using a novelty bald wig were, unsurprisingly, deemed unlikely to convince, and so I decided I would shave my head instead and wear a wig throughout the first hour of the show, which was then plucked off at the vital moment using a litter-picker's grabbystick. (Your jargon may vary.)
I well remember the occasion of having my head shaved. Rather than buying the appropriate clippers, we borrowed a regular electric shaver from -- if I remember correctly -- someone called Nick. And we killed it. (Sorry, Nick.) Touching my nude head for the first time was like caressing a Roswell alien. It was noisy in the shower, too. (I bought a range of hats for daywear, including a monstrously inappropriate woolly number from Oxfam, the significance of whose green, gold and red colour scheme was utterly lost on me.) It was, nonetheless, a momentous thing to do: partly because I've never been to a barber or hairdresser since, and thereby eliminated from my life one of the most penetrating sources of anxiety I've ever known; and partly because the control I thus took over my hair gave rise to what was pretty much the only outward indication there would ever be of the (entirely amicable) discontinuity between my upbringing and my adult life.
That was a good show, that one. The female lead was a radiantly lovely girl called Alice Dewey, who, last I heard, is now a senior curator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art; there were wonderful voice-overs by J.H. Prynne and Terry Waite (the Mark B and Blade of Cambridge letters), and video stuff shot by Tom Guard; and, best of all, I got my face licked every night by the eerily beautiful Dorian Lynskey, who has gone on to become one of the two or three best music writers in the country, but for some reason doesn't seem to lick my face any more.

The superfluous word in the above paragraph is, of course, "children's".

I was 21 and in love. Every day I thought my heart would burst.

Quite a lot of alt-minded persons at around that time seemed to want to look a bit like Tintin. Actually my role model here was (the post-makeover) Ely from Go Fish. (V.S. Brodie where are you now? You rocked my world!) I couldn't quite get it together, but this is not a bad attempt, with the check overshirt and all -- I think I could pass for a generic lesbian c.1994. Which is, after all, the year it was.
I can't begin to tell you how much I was listening to Pearl Jam's Vitalogy at this time.

Note also the first appearance of lobe decor. In fact I didn't get my ear pierced till the following year, and anyway, it wasn't that ear that got done. What I'm wearing in this picture, and had been sporting from time to time over the past few months, was a little stick-on plastic jewel thing. You could buy them in packs in Tammy Girl. (Perhaps you still can. Though I suppose most kids nowadays are comprehensively pierced by 36 months and the need for self-adhesive ear-studs is completely exhausted.)
I cropped and cropped this picture to try and rid it of its odd Readers' Wives redolence, but to no avail; I think actually it probably resides in the curtains behind me.
2 comments:
Chris!!!!! The 1993 picture blows me away! It is you - but it isn't you, but clearly it is you, but... [repeat to fade]
This whole post is wonderful. I read it whilst in a smelly, noisy room in Cardiff's quality Travel Lodge last night. It takes a lot to restore one's faith in humaity when sitting in yet another anonymous hotel room. But this did. I think this post contains a lot of the things that are important in life. Like playing the piano. And falling in love. And lollipops. And Pearl Jam. And stuff, y'know.
I more than agree.
The history of hair is a voyage of undoubted self-discovery.
I remember for a while sporting the all-the-rage post grunge undercut. The things one will do to make oneself look less like an angst-riddled sixteen year old trapped in the body of an angelic twelve year old. I was (alas) a late bloomer. Tough times.
Early-twenties and my father keeps threatening me with his baldness, as if some mysterious sort is going to sneak round in the night and spirit away my lustrous blonde curls to use as thatch for the homeless.
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