but when the bald patch starts appearing it`s time to stop kidding yourself

I stopped having it cut when I stopped the day job, over three years ago.

I had the long hair in a pony-tail look for a few years back in the 90s. Everyone told me it was a bad look back in the day and they were right. Like many men I suppose I was motivated to grow it while I still had it because it might not have been an option a few years later. As it happens, I've still a fine head of hair. Anyway, the re were a few hints that it was time to crop the old Davy Crockett hat..

1) I was working a s a social worker and one of my senior managers contacted the office one day to say that someone had asked him why they had sent "Swampy", around to interview their family.

2) I was walking past a building site and I got wolf-whistled at by a builder. I genuinely don't think he was being ironic based on the expression on his face when I turned around.

3) Rather than get it cut short, I went for a halfway between long and short cut. In hindsight it was something of a Shirley Temple Bob. When I premiered it at work, two of my colleagues couldn't remain in the same room as me through laughing so much, they were in pain. This was more of an issue as I was in court regarding very serious care proceedings and our barrister couldn't look me in the face without cracking up. She was really uncontrollable. I don't know how we got through it. I went straight out after court and got it chopped and have kept it short ever since.

However I still have my plaited pony-tail in a box, much to my girlfriend's disgust. It's still in great condition.

Well, in the sense that I still have my pony tail in a plastic bag somewhere. My hair used to be down to my shoulder blades; I had it shorn the day after my daughter was born. Can't have her swinging on it, I thought.

(Gives everyone the fingers and goes back to tending the dying embers of the flames of punk).

........is that people don't have long hair.
Not that long lank hair beloved of heavy metal, obviously!
But - tattooed baldies who are everywhere I look.....put it this way, NOW is the time to grow your hair.
(Think Potato Head Rooney)

I haven't had anything even approaching long hair since I was 15. And even then, it was just chin-length grunge-curtains. I even had an undercut at one point. Carter-tastic. But then I was a skinny streak of piss at the time.

These days, being the corpulent six-foot shithouse I find myself to be, when my hair grows longer than about an inch at any point on my head, it's down the barber for me. Anything longer, I look like a tramp's mate.

did a movember and realised I looked like a nob at the end of it. Cut it and I look like a teenager again.

Saw a geezer today with a tash and sideburns and just thought oooh someone tell him.

Just when the wind had started to whip it in great lumps round my face. I also realised it didn't quite suit my (then) Withnail-inspired wardrobe: long, thick, black hair and long, thick tweed coats don't really match, to be honest.

..I realised I looked too much like a fat lass.

So I'm the only person here growing my hair, then?

(and the only female poster so far...)

On the subject of facial hair, Mrs BP prefers me with my beard. I shaved it off earlier this year and after a while she suggested I grow it back. She likes the grey in it apparently.

With this chap on Yahoo Answers, who's taken the time out to supply a long, detailed answer to a very particular question (concerning a very particular kind of hair) that I was about to ask here, without giggling, or cracking up once. Thanks, 'Still Waters.'

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061201174619AAllntF

It's so long ago King Charles might have been on the throne. In any event, I had shoulder-length hair, which gave me the appearance of a bespectacled King Charles Spaniel (there's Chas again) I was quite happy with the look. Every six weeks or so, my hairdresser would threaten the barnet with a razor and remove minute quantities of split ends. Then I joined the Territorial Army. They had no rule about hairlength, but the very first training weekend made it clear to me that a would-be Action Man couldn't cut it with Barbie hair. Back to the salon, where they had to borrow a pair of scissors from the ladies' stylist next door to hack the mop off. Never had long hair since , and as the bald patch is developing nicely, I doubt I'll ever have long hair again, particularly as long completely gray hair is only a good look on Emmylou Harris, and even then only by the narrowest of margins

I went for a flat-top. I had a huge nondescript dog-on-head cut at the time. The barber did his stuff. My very thick tresses jammed his clippers. In the end, it was done. So radically that I couldn't grasp the hairs on my crown betwixt thumb and forefinger.

I looked like a thug.

I liked it.

I still have a lot of hair which grows fast and thick. It is, however, a lot greyer now than once it was.

Most of it, however, seems to sprout from my nostrils, ears and eyebrows.

...is pictures.

It was a pain to grow, as my hair gets wavy when it long. For the longest time it all grow to one side until its weight was enough to pull it down. For several months I looked like I was growing a second head.

The problem then was that as I lived in dingy bedsits in cold and rainy Preston I could go a full day after washing it and find it was still damp. After the first week of jumping whenever I saw the short haired chap in my reflection in shop windows I never regretted getting rid.

Long hair was frowned upon so off it went in the summer of '77 and has never come back. It looked ridiculous then, would look even more ridiculous now. Mind you my son has long hair. He's a bit of a Dave Grohl look alike so it suits him and, more importantly his wife like it!