AT the age of 52, I am having to face up to the reality that I don’t have as much hair as I used to.

The vast curly mop that once had me likened to Leo Sayer (although I much preferred the occasional reference to David Essex) isn’t quite what it used to be. It’s like a rain forest being reduced to a few weeds clinging on to planet earth for dear life.

Logic would, therefore, suggest that the cost of having a haircut should be coming down. Less hair...less work for the hair-dresser... less of an impact on my wallet. But it isn’t quite working out that way.

I went for my latest monthly haircut recently and, as has been the case for the past 25 years, put myself in the reliable hands of my hairdresser, friend and confidante Nigel Dowson, who trades in Darlington but lives out in Cockfield.

There was a time when Nigel had to attack my hair like a swash-buckling, sword-wielding adventurer hacking his way through a tangled jungle. It used to take him ages to sweep up the pile of fuzz on the shop floor.

These days, he’d be finished in a flash if he didn’t keep gabbing on at great length about everything from his new grandson, his latest holiday, the funny things the lads come out with down the club, what he fancies at Ascot next week, and how he’s put his handyman skills to good use and built a new lean-to (which he laughably calls an “orangery”).

Anyway, I sat there for an hour, pretended his stories were amusing, closed my eyes as usual when he put the mirror over my head so as not to see the bald patch, and went to pay my usual tenner.

“It’s £30 this time,” said, Nigel, avoiding eye contact.

I thought I’d misheard. “What did you say?” I asked.

“It’s £30,” he repeated.

I’ve never been great at maths (O- level grade C) but even I know that’s over the rate of inflation. Nigel’s a good, solid hairdresser but he’s no Vidal Sassoon. My wife might spend that kind of money on a cut and blow dry but not me.

“Your Jack’s been in twice in the past fortnight,” Nigel explained, with a smile. “He told me you’d pay next time you were in.”

Jack is our 21-year-old. He’s been home from university for the summer and he spends more time getting his hair right than Cheryl Cole.

He’d been into Nigel’s to have “a proper haircut” and returned two weeks later to have “a tidy up” before he went back to university. On both occasions, he’d said: “Dad’ll pay.”

I lobbed three tenners on the counter and flounced out. I might go back – I might not bother. It can’t be that hard to do it yourself.

THE THINGS THEY SAY

DURING a recent talk to the Cestrian Flower Club at Lumley Castle, near Chester-le-Street, one of the members, who asked to remain anonymous, told me about her son David, who had been watching television in his bedroom.

It was the long-gone days of black and white TV and when his mum went into the room, she discovered that David was watching a film about a prostitute who had been murdered.

“That’s totally unsuitable for a boy of your age,” she told her eight-year-old. “I bet you don’t even know what a prostitute is.”

“I do, I do,” replied David. “It’s when you’re not a Catholic.”

PAST chairwoman Mary Ardle remembered the time her son Jonathan was ten and they were out shopping.

“Mum, what does it mean to be sterilised?” asked Jonathan.

His mum, a little taken aback, tenderly started to explain about hysterectomies.

“Why do you want to know?” she asked.

“Because it says on that milk carton that you’ve got to be sterilised before you drink it,” came the reply.