I love getting my hair cut.

Sure, the hairwash and the treatment and the massage are nice; free coffee and trashy fashion mags are ace; leaving looking like a million bucks is... well, worth a million bucks. But actually, what I really like about getting my hair cut, is the actual cutting of the hair.

This would be a prime opportunity for the inclusion of some really edgy metaphors about ridding oneself of the old (that being, after all, what hair is: dead weight), perhaps get a bit of snakes-shedding-skins imagery in there, a bit of cycle-of-rebirth wank. Pretend I did, if you like, but the simple truth is that I just like having short hair.

This preference is, in its own way, something of a grand prize of a long struggle against myself. For as long as I can remember, what I have wanted more than anything in the world is to have long, blue-black curls. So why don't I? With the wonders of modern fashionista-ing, right, anything is possible.

Wrong. Blue-black makes my warm-tone skin look sallow and my hair will not take a curl even if you drug it, pay it, and threaten to kill its kith and kin. I managed to convince myself that the fluffy horror of the first perm was just a tragic misunderstanding that would not be repeated, but after a second disaster, I just gave my friends permission to shoot me should the suggestion ever pass my lips again, and resigned myself to straight hair. It's cool.

Black, though, was totally do-able, in strictly non-cool-toned measures. And the first time I went black nicely coincides with the first time I went short.

Well, not the first time. I'd had short hair for much of my childhood because it's easy to look after (my father used to cut my fringe with the kitchen scissors and a piece of tape across my forehead) and my mother always maintained (and I've come to agree with her) that it suits me. As I got into my teenage years I started growing it out, because of the standard long-hair/princess yen that most girls feel. It got pretty long. Halfway down my back long. Every morning my mother would braid it, and I'd just leave it in overnight (reducing sleep-thrash tangles) until brushing it loose about half an hour before she did it again the next morning. In short: gorgeous long hair, but I didn't do anything with it.

About a week before my senior prom, I got it all cut off into a Louise Brooks bob and dyed it black.

It took some firm restating and a bit of encouragement to get the hairdresser to do it. ("No, shorter. No, shorter. Yes, like that.") First day at school, I got sixteen variations on, "What did your mother say?" (Answer: "See, I told you short hair suited you.") And for the whole hour I was sitting in that chair watching the hair pile up on the floor, I was grinning. It was liberating. It was awesome. I no longer had to worry about doing things with my hair. My hair was done.

I've grown it out a couple of times since then, to lesser extents. Every time it edges past my shoulders, I hit the same problem: what do I do with it?

Yes, fundamentally, I'm lazy. (This surprises precisely no one who knows me, I'm sure.) Short hair doesn't need to be done. It requires no thought. Rarely, with me, does it even get product and more than two seconds styling. It's precisely the same wherever I'm going. I don't need to take heaps of stuff with me when I travel. Heck, if I forget my brush, it's probably going to be fine. It doesn't get caught in my earrings or necklaces or collar. It doesn't get in my face when I'm dancing.

I just like having short hair. And watching the hair fall on the floor as the hairdresser snips away is grin-inducing every time, because it's going to be short and easy and fabulous.

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