‘I’M shaving my heid,” I announced to my followers on Twitter. “The full lot – right aff.” It was bravado, tweeted in confidence that I would go and sit down in the barber’s chair and proclaim, “Gies a baldy.”

This is not how events transpired. When I woke up on Friday morning, I turned to my girlfriend and said, “This is it, hen. This is the day the hair’s coming aff.”

I’ve always been proud of my hair. It’s very thick and curly and when I take the time to fix it, it sits nice. But recently I’ve become scunnered with it. It just seems to grow and grow, ever upwards and outward, bigger and bigger, pushing the boundaries of what human hair can do. I let it grow as big as I could a few years back, just to see, and the results were astonishing. Honestly, the size of my heid became inexplicable. My hair easily added about six inches to my height, maybe more. Only one picture of this period of my life remains and it hangs, laughing at me, on the wall of my granny’s living room. I got it cut off after one day in work, a guy came back in to complain about being overcharged for something. When questioned on who served him, he replied, “That boay wi the hair.”

That boay wi the hair. The words echoed round my mind, taunting me, for the rest of my shift. I read somewhere when I was younger that any haircut is fine for a guy as long as you avoid the ones that have names. Trying not to be known simply as “that boay wi the hair” is probably a good rule of thumb as well.

So since then I’ve tried to keep it tamed. Keeping the back and sides nice and short and with just a bit of length on top to play with. Curly but tidy. Presentable. Well, that was always the plan. Since I’ve become a self-employed writer, I’ve become a bit of a hermit. Deadlines coming up fast and emails piling up, keeping on top of my appearance became the last thing on my mind. My hair would grow wild between cuts, and the cuts were few and far between. Only really going for a haircut when I had to go and do something important or for a rare night out. If I had to go somewhere at short notice, I’d have to spend a lot of time trying to make this horrible mass on top of my heid look decent. So I decided it had to go. On Friday morning I got ready to head to the barbers. My girlfriend gave my luscious curls one last ruffle and sent me on my way. I text my maw to tell her what I was about to do.

“What if you’ve got a weird shaped heid?” she replied. I hadn’t thought of that. I nervously ran a hand over my skull, feeling for any oddities in its shape. It seemed normal enough to me, but then it had been hidden under mountains of hair for so long, I had no idea what kind of shape it was really. Despite my mounting trepidation, I was going to shave it all off no matter what. I could’ve done it myself but I suppose the one thing worse than getting a baldy is a giving yourself bad baldy.

I tweeted a “before” picture of my hair, just to make sure I did it. The people were waiting for the big reveal with bated breath. “Solidarity, brother,” my follicly challenged pal said. “Should shave aff the brows anaw,” someone else said. I was shaking as I sat and waited to be called to the chair. “Zero aw err,” I repeated in my head. “Don’t let yersel be talked oot ae this.”

“Take a seat, mate,” the barber said, snapping me out of my trance. I walked over and felt sick. I looked at myself in the mirror as he fitted the gown around my neck.

When he asked what I wanted, I bottled it. “Zero at the back and sides please, mate,” I said before adding despondently, “an a three at the tap.”

“Woaft. Ye sure, wee man?” he said. “That’s really short.”

“Aye, take it aw aff.”

When he clicked the shavers on, it was like when they do that mad focus pull thing with the camera in films. The guy stood back and admired his work. “Ye suit it, mate,” he said. I looked up. It looked … awrite. My heid wasn’t a weird shape. A success.

But I’d let the people down. They wanted baldy. I promised them baldy. I let them down.

“Bring me the baldy heid of Chris McQueer,” was the first tweet I saw when I got back in the motor. When I got home, my girlfriend ran her hands over my new fuzzy heid. She loved it, she told me. “Maybe grow it back soon though.” The dug’s reaction was weird. I hadn’t thought about how he’d react, he looked at me like I was a stranger. Sniffed me. Looked me up and down then, satisfied it was actually me, came over for a clap.

I posted a picture of my new hair on Twitter. The people were not happy. Specifically, the bald people.

“I wanted a shiny bald head. Unfollowed.”

“You are a sh***bag and a liar. You have made a mockery of my people.”

“I don’t go through the torture I do on a daily basis for being a bald man for someone like you to throw a half-*rsed stunt like that. You should be ashamed.”

It was my granny that delivered the most crushing blow however.

“Yer heids toaty. It’s like a pea oan tap ae a dumplin.”

I’m growing it back. Never mind.