Big hair day

Today saw my first proper haircut since 29th January, 2020. An important fact noted in the family archive. 

I had turned up at the barbers next to Wetherspoon's (just a few hardy souls braving the cold wild under the umbrellas) on the off-chance, to find that although it was nominally booking only - to avoid having people sitting waiting - I was able to get started as soon as I had locked my bike up. The chap who did it thought that, all things considered, BH had not done too bad a job and it would only take him one more cut to get things back under control. As it happened, his clippers came from the same firm - Wahl - as our lockdowns. He hastened to add that he had proper professional clippers, rather than clippers for the home clipper. And I suppose it does look a bit better than it did after BH's efforts, as can be seen by following the pointers at reference 1.

I asked about his hands, whether they had lost tone or callus in the course of the two lockdowns. It seems that the strength was still in the fingers OK and the only problem was that the calluses where the scissors bore on the fingers had worn a bit thin.

Celebrated by a visit to Grape Tree to top up on dried figs and brick dates. And a visit to Waitrose to top up on Calvados - which has vanished from Majestic. Which meant that I was entitled to a free newspaper, which meant that I took a Telegraph for a change, BH having already got a Guardian on her weekly shop at Sainsbury's.  My haircut was supposed to be a surprise for her, so I wasn't able to stand her down. So we got to learn all about a plague of wild boars in Haifa of all places. I had known that they were something of a pest in France and Spain among other places, but Israel was new to us.

The picture in the print copy of the DT featured a car with number plate '18-284-34', which I think would have scored had I been able to find the same picture on their website, which I couldn't, at least not without signing up with them, which I didn't want to do. So no score. But they did offer the picture above as a consolation prize. Note all the cuddly piglets. According to the DT, the boars can breed at quite a rate, with one lady boar producing getting on for 30 piglets a year.

Just as with foxes here in Surrey, some people think they are cuddly and feed them while most people think they are vermin. But enough feeders for there to be a problem.

PS 1: while I believe that in some parts of north America, brown bears fill this particular niche.

PS 2: I had forgotten that the selfie camera built into my laptop is greatly inferior to that built into my telephone. But it was quicker and easier, even if Cortana didn't have a clue how to turn it on.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/more-shearing.html. The lasting outing for Wahl.