I was cutting my hair last week. It helps that I have almost no hair to cut because having nothing to cut alleviates the problem of having zero expertise.
However, I’ve been doing it for many years, with electric clippers, much as I imagine I might shear a sheep, and I’ve become fairly adept at the all-over, no.1 crop which is what we, the bald, laughingly call a hairstyle.
My clippers have always been reliable but last week, as I was about three quarters of the way through my haircut, the motor seemed to skip a beat, like a car misfiring, and they felt hotter than usual.
Not only that, but they started to smell. And not only that, but as I looked in the mirror I saw that smoke was now emerging from the clippers which were in the process of catching fire in my hand.
Weirdly, though, my first thought was not, ‘Wow, the clippers are on fire, I’d better stop cutting my hair’. It was, ‘Oh no, the clippers are on fire and I only have three-quarters of a haircut.
Nonetheless, I did stop and felt the back of my head to determine how bad it all was before going downstairs to get a second opinion. ‘Bad’ was the answer, as my partner Susie got to work with a pair of low-tech scissors.
There are a number of things to observe here. First, that when your hair clippers catch fire, its time to stop cutting your hair. Second, that, despite this, when faced with the shame of a botched crop my instinct was to keep going. And third, that the most reliable thing in the story was not the machinery I’d relied on for years but Susie, who did her level best to level things out.
Now the bible is very clear about who and what is reliable. Time and again we read the words, ’Trust in the Lord’. Trust him because he knows you. Trust him because he loves you. And, more to the point trust him because he is trustworthy.
We rely on all sorts of things every day- the bus, the computer, the fridge – and sooner or later they all fail. But someone who knows us? Someone who loves us? Someone who is trustworthy? That, I reckon, is what real reliability is.
I realise, reading back, that I was unnecessarily modest about my expertise with the clippers. Two of the three boys in the house have opted for the lockdown crop in recent months and demand for my services has skyrocketed.