Baldfader

When I went to the barber’s on Valentine’s Day 2020, it didn’t occur to me that it may have been my last such visit. At the time I was in the habit of getting buzz-cuts every other month, which means I was ready for another one in April. By then, of course, the first round of Covid-related restrictions were in full effect. No barbers were open, nor would they be for some time therafter.

I decided I’d try cutting my own hair. I had some cordless clippers, acquired for facial-hair trimming. Alas, they proved to be quite unequal to the task at hand. In the end I resorted to shaving my head with a safety razor, which I found awkward and time-consuming to do. Nor were the results immediately encouraging: staring at an entirely bald pate in the mirror for the first time, I did not like what I saw.

But then, within a few days, with just a first hint of new growth in evidence, I felt it didn’t look bad at all. Being in possession of a big & bulby skull, I’d hitherto been apprehensive about exposing it more nakedly (progressive hair-loss, meanwhile, was giving me less choice in the matter). While weighing up the merits of a shorter hairstyle, it also occurred to me that I might, under the cover of lockdown isolation, try cultivating a moustache (a topic for another post).

Going on-line, I sought to buy some proper clippers. With a great many other people facing similar predicaments, supply was short, and, in some quarters, prices were inflated. At the Wahl website, from the limited stock they had available, I opted to buy a Baldfader Plus, a model apparently devised with close trimming of afro hair in mind, which mine (straight, fine & thinning) very much isn’t. I reckoned that if it could handle thicker hair with ease, mine oughtn’t pose it any problems.

Indeed it worked admirably well, and ever since I’ve been self-inflicting very short buzz-cuts every five weeks or so. Earlier this year I dropped & damaged the original clippers, after which they weren’t quite right. By way of replacement I ordered a second Baldfader.