Originally, this was all one sentence.

One of the many pettifogging annoyances of being a chap is the complete inability to explain how one would like one's hair cut. When I lived in Canterbury I built up a excellent relationship with Mike from Blake's Hair and Beauty (I only made appointments for the former part).

Mike looked a bit like Louis Theroux, and played lots of Playstation 2, and saw films, and we regularly put the world to rights. And then I moved back to Cornwall, without even taking the time to say goodbye to Mike properly, although I'm sure he saw me leaning against the window while he was cutting someone else's hair (and how long had that been going on?) my face flat against the glass, while I searched endlessly for the right words to bid farewell, my tears merging with the rain and running down into the medieval gutters, while the cathedral loomed overhead like a big building made of different types of stone.

So I went to have my hair cut on Friday. I used to have my hair a bit like Angel did in the second series of 'Angel'. Before he got fat. Even his hair got fat, which was weird. But then I let my hair grow, and it got straggly, and I tried to explain my hair-based needs thusly:

ME: Okay, my hair was about the perfect sort of length about two months ago. So can we go back in time two months and have it looking like it was then?
HAIRDRESSER: Essentially, no.
ME: Oh.
HAIRDRESSER: But I can take about an inch off it if you like.
ME: Okay then.

Only it's more than an inch. And if it was a bit more, that would be okay, or a bit less would be okay too. Instead of being just the right length to leave me looking like, say, Tanita Tikeram. With more stubble*. So now I'm going to have to stay in and play World of Warcraft until I run out of food, or my hair grows a bit, whichever comes first.

Although I did go out earlier to put some stuff in the compost bin, and when I took the lid off, at least four or five worms were clinging to the lid, eyes tightly closed, trying not to be noticed. And I'm sure that's happened before, only their jedi worm mind tricks didn't work this time (the one who could wave his hands like Alec Guiness was probably off that day), so the spell was broken and I remembered all the times worms had been clinging to the lid of my compost bin. Bloody loads, now I think of it.

But there's no soil under the lid. And don't worms traditionally ally themselves more towards the general notion (and motion) of 'down'? Maybe they have one rebel thinker, a Jonathon Livingstone SeaWorm who shouted 'Now lads! Head for the light and soon we shall rule the skies!'.

Or they're running a moonshine distillery/speakeasy in my compost bin, and when I'm gone, the bits of grapefruit peel and carrot tops all slide back to reveal blackjack tables and cocktail bars. I wouldn't put it past them. Never trust anything you can cut in half and watch crawl off in two separate directions, that's my motto.

Well, actually the Henry family don't have a motto as far as I know, although we do have a crest, (I think we got it off the internet) of a pelican feeding drops of its own blood to its young. I think it's supposed to make the younger Henrys feel guilty. I think the alternative images were two hands thrown up in despair. Or maybe a group of self-obsessed whimsies, rampant.

With a motto reading 'Harrumph'.

* Doesn't mean I look anything like her brother Raamon, by the way, who used to be in that series about lawyers who had lots of baths and was apparently in that thing on Friday. He doesn't get on with his sister though, from what I've heard.