Middle Class Problems: New year, new haircut... should I get it all shaved off?

Warren Howard's mum doesn't want her son to look like a "thug" or a "footballer" or "Yul Brynner"

(Corbis)

New year, new haircut – or at least that's what I cheerily declaim as I grab my coat and make for the door on the first day that the festive fug has lifted, when January has stopped seeming like a tar-blackened lung flopped on to a lab bench for dissection, and more like a breath of fresh air. "Don't go and get it all shaved off, though, OK?" says my mum, who is visiting for the day, and who has used the occasion to emphasise the fact that she doesn't want her son (39 years old) to look like a "thug" or a "footballer" or "Yul Brynner".

I shiver as I walk the short distance to the barbers, but it isn't the cold that is worrying me. Getting it "all shaved off" was exactly what I had in mind. In fact, as I see it, I don't have much choice in the matter: what little hair there is on the top of my head is greying and distributed sparingly. But is my mum right? What do people see? Do they, clocking my thick-rimmed glasses, peg me as a pseudo-intellectual or – worse – a desperate, ageing clubber? I am a 9-to-5er, a father, the driver of a Ford Focus. In truth, I am not worried about the latest white-label from Skrillex; I am worried about the latest payment on my John Lewis leather sofa.

House music is playing in the barber, and the young Turkish lad has a tooth jewel that glints as he grins at me. I regain my composure. "Good Christmas, yeah?" he asks. "Oh, pretty… cool," I offer, catching his eye in the mirror as his grin turns to a smirk, and he reaches for his clippers. "Short back and sides, please," I say.