I had my hair cut at the weekend. This would usually be unworthy of comment - I have my hair cut on a fairly regular basis, more often than I used to as the wisps of grey that are beginning to form around my temples look more prominent and straggly the longer my hair gets. Not that I have a problem with the advent of the grey hairs - if there must be some sort of change to my less-than-lovely hair, greyness would certainly be preferable to male pattern baldness, as at least this way I don't have to find ways to keep my head warm in winter. And I might even look quite distinguished, as long I managed to repel the temptation set before me by the Just For Men adverts.

No, it wasn't the fact that the closely cropped bits around my ears look greyer than ever that disturbed me. The things that disturbed me were the barber diverting away from the top of my head to thin out my eyebrows, and then running his little clipper device thing (technical term) over the outside of each ear and having a bit of a rummage inside the ear as well. And I don't want to have to have the barber removing hair from my ears. Not that I want to be one of those old men with tufts of hair sprouting from every facial orifice - the very thought of it makes me shudder - but I don't feel old enough to have hair growing in my ears. It's all rather upsetting.

I do feel as though someone ought to have warned me in advance of this business of unsightly hair appearing in unwanted places, particularly with it coming just at the point that I was finally beginning to feel comfortable in my own skin. They tell you enough about where you're going to get hair during the teenage years, but nobody explains that you get to 30 and just when you're thinking that, actually, this isn't so bad after all, you find yourself with nasty tufts in unfortunate areas. Or maybe they did; maybe I was off school that day, and so everyone else except me knows how to deal with nasal hair. It certainly explains binge drinking, teenage pregnancies, etc; get it done now while you're young and hairless, for tomorrow we... er, might have unsightly nasal hair.