Now I don’t know if you are familiar with the saying, “Hair do”, well this is a story about a “Hair Don’t”.

From the age of 16 up until 18, I worked as a QA in a fish factory back in Grimsby. It really was top dollar for my age. Yes, it did stink of fish and yes it was cold but in 2003 – 2005 I was earning £8 ph and £12 ph over time!

It really was good fun, there was a good group of us from college that worked there and all became really good friends. Now in a lot of my pre-Liverpool stories it might sound a lot like I got a bit of hard time, all the time, from my friends and that’s because i did. It is because they love me, I used to tell myself tears streaming down my face every night before bed. I am joking naturally, I was a gobshite. Just to give you some idea of what I was like, here is a selfie of me with my dog before the term selfie had even been coined…

One particularly big payday, after filling the previous weekend with as much over time as possible, I decided to get a ‘fancy haircut’. So, the 45 in to town with the promise of a new trendy hair cut that I was certain would do wonders with girls.

Obviously, every decision ever made at 18, is all about girls. Will she like my shirt? Should I ask her out? Why did she cry after I kissed her?  You know, normal teenage stuff. 

Now the 45, like all the buses I had ever been on in Grimsby, were pretty bleak. The only real place for a socially awkward lad who couldn’t win a fight if the opposition let him, was at the front of the upper deck. You didn’t want to sit down stairs as it wasn’t cool, plus Adults sat down stairs. I never realised it then but being an Adult is mainly living as lazily as possible, like sitting on the lower deck because you cannot be arsed to go upstairs. Now on the upper deck you can’t sit at the back, not unless you was “hard”. I was in no way shape or form, “hard”. My name and the word “hard” was never ever used in the same sentence. Which arguably, probably wasn’t a bad thing.

I decided on the bus that I was going to get my hair cut at the House of Fraiser, fancy name for a fancy shopping centre for a fancy hair cut, was my logic. The naivety is unbearable to look back on.

Sat in the hairdressers chair and the conversation proceeds as such;

“What can I do for you today sir?”, the hairdresser asked,

“Oh please, there is no need to call me Sir, my dad is Sir, call me Bry”, I said, trying my best to flirt with zero success.

At this point in my life, nobody called me Bry or Bryan, so when people in Uni started to call me Bryan, I was made up. I always wanted a nickname.

After an awkward moment of her staring at me, I realised I hadn’t provided her with an accurate instruction of what I wanted her to do, so I came out with;

“I want something complete different, something really cool and that is going to make me stand out”, in the words of Meatloaf, “two out of three aint bad”.

It was certainly different, it certainly stood out but it was not remotely cool. In typical Bryan fashion, when she had finished, I told her I loved it, even though I actually did not know how I felt about it.

I had a diagonal bleach blonde semi mohawk from the back bottom left of my head running all the way to the front right of my head. At one side of this was short spiky hair and the other side combined forward hair with a fringe. Honestly, I do not think anyone could of done a worse job, I mean looking back, did she do it out of spite? I forgot to mention, I paid £130 for it. I paid a women, to make me look a complete idiot.

It could be worse…

It could be worse, I could of worn the haircut out in public, oh wait…

You guessed it, Saturday night and I was going out. But wait, there is more.

At school and college, there was four of us. In separable, like annoyingly in separable to everyone else we were friends with and credit were credit due, Paul, was years a head of us when it came to fashion and dressing well. He still is now. Now, at this point in our lives Paul used to wear blazers on nights out, so I thought to myself I would do the same. New haircut, New me! A Nice black with white pinstripe blazer which was too big for me with a dark blue on blue stripey shirt under neath. “Yes, that looks good”, I clearly must of thought before heading out in to public. My friends clearly were not my friends, they should of not let me leave, shaved my head or something!

So there I was, the very epitome of female repellent. If there was ever such a thing to exist, a spray that repelled women, a picture of me on this night out would be on that spray can. So tragic. It didn’t help that I looked like Puberty had forgotten about me, all in all 18 year old me was a catch! I actually laughed out loud as I typed that sentence.

So, the moment you have all been waiting for, unless you skipped to the end.

Behold….

Bry x