A New Hobby, Part 3: Liz Has a Close Shave (Ff/f)

[Weird Aunt Ettie]

A New Hobby

by Weird Aunt Ettie

Part 3: Liz Has A Close Shave

The third week of the UK’s Covid-19 lockdown was a bit different for us. The Easter school holiday started on 6 April. There was still some schoolwork in hand as the teachers had provided optional packages of non-curricular work for the students to do online out of interest. My two girls, Liz (13) and Alice (15) welcomed this as it enabled the rhythm of life we had established for ourselves to continue. The occasional group chats with guidance teachers were still running but were far less formal. There was definitely no school uniform and dressing-up themes features some days.

Over breakfast on Tuesday of that week Liz surprised us with an announcement. Her hair was in its customary long plait. As usual, she had braided it with a slight twist so that it naturally came forward over her left shoulder. “This,” she said, waving the plait at us, “is going to get the chop this week.”

All three of us have the same dead-straight hair. It’s too soft to take a perm (I know, I tried at one time). The colour is a rather undistinguished mouse brown: too dark to be plausibly blonde, too light to be dramatically brunette. Mine is also going distinctly grey, which is alarming the girls as I’m not quite 40 yet. I wear my hair in a short pixie cut, while Alice has a severely geometric bob, down to chin level at the sides and right up to her hairline at the back. We all have quite fast-growing hair, about 1½ centimetres every month, which has enabled Liz to grow an enormously long plait, reaching down below her waist level.

Liz had been getting increasingly grumpy about her hair, particularly as she was overdue a visit to the hairdresser even before lockdown and there was now no prospect of that for several months, although surprising, her announcement wasn’t a total surprise.

“I could pop out and get the garden shears,” Alice offered.

“I’m being serious,” Liz retorted, rather too sharply. “I want to make this count, so I want raise money by doing it.”

“Money for who?” I asked.

“Well, right now it ought to be for the health service,” Liz said.

“Isn’t the National Health Service paid for out of tax?” Alice asked.

“It is,” I replied. “That’s why you don’t pay to see the doctor or go to hospital, but there are charities that provide stuff for NHS staff and patients comfort and welfare. There will be something local if you look online.”

“Can you sell the hair too?” Alice asked.

“Yes you can,” Liz replied. “I’ve already looked that up. There’s at least one charity that uses donated hair to make wigs for kids.”

“For kids?” Alice echoed.

“Chemotherapy, burns, head injuries. Reasons like that,” Liz explained, clearly on top of the subject.

“That’s the hair, but how are you going to raise money?” I asked.

“I’ll make it a staged event,” Liz replied. “I'll get the word out on social media and put up a page on one of the charity fundraising sites. Then we can live stream the cut and maybe leave it on YouTube for a bit afterwards.”

“You’ve been thinking about this for a while, haven’t you?” I commented. “Have you got a date in mind?”

“This coming Saturday is Easter Saturday, so that might be a good day? And maybe you two could help?”

I thought of a problem. “It’s a great idea, but your hair is going to be a mess afterwards. Neither of us is going to be any good at cutting hair.”

Liz took a deep breath. “I’ve thought of that. I want this to be a big event, so how about a complete head shave with me tied to a chair?”

There was stunned silence.

“But you’ll be bald for ages,” Alice objected.

“No I won’t. We won’t be back at school until some time in June at the earliest. I’ll have 2 or 3 centimetres of hair by that time and I can wear a hat until then.”

“You’ll certainly get attention if that’s what you’re planning,” I said.

“Can I do it, Mum?” Liz asked anxiously.

“It’s for a good cause, for two good causes even, and like you say, the hair will grow back, so I don’t see why not,” I replied. “And I think you should mention it to Aunt Stella she’s really good on fundraising ideas.”

Aunt Stella or, more formally, the Reverend Stella Nicholson, is my big sister, 3 years older than me, and often a confidante for the girls.

“I’ll text her and see if she can chat later,” Liz said, picking up her phone.

Stella must have had her phone to hand as the reply came only a few minutes later. “She suggests Zoom at 10 0’clock,” Liz said. She glanced at each of us and we both nodded our agreement. Liz texted a reply to that effect and a moment later our phones pinged to signal the arrival of the invitation email from Stella.

At 10 o’clock, I was back in my office. I opened Stella’s email and clicked through to the Zoom session. The girls were already there, sharing Alice’s laptop. It was a little distracting hearing the girls’ voices directly then a fraction of a second later through Zoom, so I put a pair of headphones on.

Liz had already launched into her discussion with Stella as I settled down to the chat.

Liz: ...and I really want to switch to more manageable hair, so I thought I could make an event of it and maybe raise some money as well as giving people a bit of a laugh.

Stella: So tell me exactly who you’re supporting and how you’re going to do it.

Liz: There’s two charities. I’ve found one that makes wigs for children with medical hair loss and they accept donations of hair. For the event, I was going to give anything I raise to an NHS welfare charity because that’s something that everyone will want to support just now.

Stella: And the event?

Liz: I get tied to a chair and then Mum and Alice shave my head and we live stream it. I’ll set up a donations page on JustGiving or something and we can post the video on YouTube for a few days afterwards.

Stella: Umm. Being tied up might be a bit tougher than you imagine.

Liz (shaking her head): I know what it will be like. Alice and I have been tied up lots of times.

Alice: Maybe not lots but quite a few times now.

Liz: It’s fun, especially when Mum ties us up and it’s really hard to escape.

Stella (laughing): The apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it, Morgan?

(I don’t think I’ve explained that I’m Morgan. It’s actually my middle name, but I hate Vanessa, which is what I was actually supposed to be called, so I’ve been Morgan since I was about 6.)

Alice: What?

Me: Umm.

Stella: You haven’t told them have you?

Me (after a deep breath): I think what Stella is saying is that when we were about your age, we used to tie each other up quite a lot.

Both girls: What?!?

That was loud enough that I heard them direct before they came over Zoom, even though I was wearing headphones.

Alice: And you didn’t tell us?

Liz: That’s why you’re so good at tying up, isn’t it? It’s not just because you were in the Sea Scouts.

Stella: I think you’re rumbled, sister dear. Sorry about blowing your cover.

Me: It would have come out anyway, so I might as well come clean. Aunt Stella and I used to set each other escape challenges. I learned lots of useful knots in the Sea Scouts...

Stella: ...and I did too, in the Girl Guides.

Alice: Weren’t you in the Sea Scouts as well?

Stella: Me? No way! I can get seasick just walking through a puddle; you’ll never get me out in a small boat.

Alice: Did Grandma know about it? Didn’t she mind?

Me: She knew and she didn’t mind at all. She thought we were a bit peculiar but she set the rules we had to play by.

Liz: You had rules?

Me: The same as I insist on for you two. Nobody gets tied up unless they’re willing, nobody gets bullied or coerced, and you have to keep it safe.

Stella: Our mum would sometimes intervene to even things up if we didn’t quite play by the rules.

Alice: It sounds like there might be a story there. Are you going to tell?

Me: It’ll have to be the Sock Incident. Are you OK with that, Stella?

Liz: If it’s got a name, it has to be worth telling!

Stella: This needs time to tell and I don’t have time to tell it right now. Next Zoom session?

Me: Coward!

Stella: Next Zoom session, I promise!

Alice: You won’t be our favourite aunt if you don’t.

Stella: Umm, I’m your only aunt.

Alice: True, but ‘favourite’ is still in the balance.

The conversation then veered onto its originally intended direction as Stella outlined the steps Liz should take to ensure good publicity and efficient fundraising. All three of us at our end of the conversation made notes as we talked. After 15 minutes or so Stella looked at her watch pointedly.

Stella: Now, parish duties call. I need to do some phone calls and video chats to a few more people this morning so I’ll have to bail out now. Liz, give me a call if you need to ask anything more and let me know when you’ve got the details worked out for your haircut.

Liz: OK.

Stella (waving): Bye then.

Girls and me (waving back): Bye!

The Zoom window disappeared as Stella cut the connection.

“So, I need to do some work, what are you two going to do next?” I asked.

“Facebook and Instagram announcements and a JustGiving page first,” Liz replied. “We’ll go and do that right now.”

The next morning, we were reviewing arrangements for Liz’s forthcoming haircut and head-shave. Liz confirmed that she had done the publicity that Aunt Stella had recommended and that a donation page had been set up and already had over £50 of the £500 target that she had set.

Alice consulted an app on her phone then said, “The weather looks really good for Saturday. We could do this outside where there’s more space.”

“The lighting would be better too,” Liz added.

“Do you still want to be tied to a chair for this?” I asked.

“Definitely,” Liz replied firmly. “It will give the whole thing a bit of an edge.”

“Then we ought to rehearse that so it doesn't end up taking far longer than the actual haircut,” I suggested.

“If we use one of the outside chairs, that will look good on video,” Alice pointed out.

Our outside chairs are a set of four Tolix chairs, a café chair made of galvanised pressed steel and something of a design classic. Don’t worry if the name doesn’t mean anything to you, you’ll almost certainly recognise them. Just drop ‘Tolix chair’ into Google images and you’ll see what I mean. Our chairs came with the house when my late husband and I bought it. They are possibly older than I am. I had them renovated a couple of years back by getting them grit-blasted to remove corrosion, then re-galvanised and powder coated in bright colours, red, yellow, blue and green.

“Have we got scissors sharp enough for cutting hair?” I asked.

“We can do better than scissors,” Liz said. “We’ve got Marmalade’s clipper.”

Marmalade, our dog, is a Labradoodle. They don’t shed hair, so they need to be kept trimmed and we use a cordless electric clipper for that, a perfectly standard one meant for human hair.

“I’ll give the clipper a thorough clean and lubricate the blades before Saturday,” Alice volunteered.

“And I’ve got razors in stock for the final shave, but we’ll need to pick up some shaving foam,” I added.

“How about this afternoon to work out how we’re going to tie Liz up?” Alice suggested.

Liz and I both agreed and we all headed off to our various morning tasks.

Shortly after lunch, we re-convened in the kitchen. Alice lugged one of the Tolix chairs in from outside. (Lugged, because they are surprisingly heavy at around four and a half kilos (about 10 pounds.) Liz brought the box of ropes from the girl’s bedroom and sat herself down on the chair.

“Is that what you’re planning to wear on Saturday?” I asked.

“Yes, but I’ll mark up the shirt with the kids’ wigs charity before then,” Liz replied.

She was dressed simply in a white tee shirt with black leggings and red trainers.

“Round the waist first?” Alice asked.

“It looks like the obvious place to start,” I agreed.

The back of the chair is a single steel tube forming an arch, with a broad central pressing, to make a backrest. Alice looped a length of rope three or four times round her sister’s waist and the central part of the chair back then knotted it off at the front.

Positioning Liz’s arms proved more problematic. We tried putting them through the gaps between the centre and sides of the chair back but we couldn’t get her wrists anywhere near each other without bending her elbows the wrong way.

Next, we tried tying her wrists to the thin tubes that formed the sides of the chair back. Of course, tied that way, she was able to slide her wrist bindings up and down the tubes by bending her elbows. We corrected that by tying her arms to thee tubes just above her elbows, but that still left quite a lot of wriggle room. It was more-or-less corrected with a coil of rope around her arms and chest and the backrest, but still left her wrists very loosely tied.

“This really isn’t working very well.” Alice commented.

I nodded my agreement. “Let’s stick with this for now, but we might just have to tie her hands in front of her.”

We didn’t do much better with Liz’s legs. The outward-facing part of the chair legs is curved and convex, which doesn’t provide an obvious position for our victim’s legs. We settled for one of us holding one of Liz’s feet in place and the other wrapping a coil of rope around her ankle and the chair leg then knotting the ends. We did that to the other ankle then asked Liz to see how much freedom she had. Naturally, she was able to slide her ankle from side to side quite easily.

“It’s probably more secure than it looks,” Alice ventured.

Liz agreed. “I’m pretty sure I can’t get out of this, but I do seem to have an awful lot of wriggle room.”

“So it’s a fairly secure tie-up that looks fake, rather than the other way around as usual,” I summarised. “Normally, with a problem like this, I would suggest pondering it over a cup of tea, but that seems a bit unfair with Liz all tied up like that.”

“Would bungee cords work?” Liz asked.

“I don’t know, I’ve never tried tying anyone up that way,” I replied, “but it’s worth a go.”

“The tea sounds like a good idea,” Alice said. “You put the kettle on, I’ll get Liz out of this and then we’ll work out what to do.”

Ten minutes later, we each has a mug of tea in front of us and we were sorting through a bundle of bungee cords (or shock cords, if you prefer) in a wide variety of lengths and colours. These had been accumulated over the years for cycling, camping, securing loads on roof racks and securing various items in the garage. Most were very dusty and needed wiping down and a few were frayed beyond use.

Liz resumed her seat on the garden chair. Alice selected a cord that she thought might be the right length. She wrapped it around Liz’s waist, taking it behind the central part of the chair back as she did so, then attached the two ends to the sides of the chair back using the hooks on the ends of the cords.

“That feels pretty secure,” Liz reported.

“Really quick and easy too,” Alice added.

“Let’s see if the rest works as well,” I said, rummaging through the stock of cords. I picked out two and handed one to Alice. I wrapped the one I was holding several times around Liz’s left leg and the chair leg, just above her ankle. I hooked the two ends together behind the chair leg.

Alice copied what I had done and we stood back.

Liz squirmed around on her seat then aid, “That’s really good. It’s not at all uncomfortable but it works really well. I think I’m genuinely stuck.”

“How do we do her hands?” Alice asked. “There’s nothing obvious to tie them to, and we already know that behind her back doesn’t work.”

“I think I know what to do,” I said. “Liz, hold hour hands out in front of you.”

I selected another cord and formed a loose overhand knot in the middle of it. I slid it over Liz’s hands and pulled the ends so that the cord tightened on her wrists. I pulled it snug, but made sure that the pressure wasn’t going to cause any discomfort. I took the ends down oven the sides of the chair seat, and hooked them together underneath it. I used another cord to hold her forearms down, with two full turns over her arms and under the chair seat before hooking the ends together.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“I can still lean forward.” Liz demonstrated. “But I don’t think I can get out of this.”

“We can fix the leaning forward,” I said as I wrapped another cord around Liz’s upper arms and chest and the centre of the backrest then hooking the ends to the sides of the chair back.

Liz squirmed around for a bit in her bonds then assured us that she was well and truly helpless.

“We should practice this to get it really quick and slick for Saturday,” Alice suggested.

I agreed, so we freed Liz and retied her, timing ourselves this time. On the third attempt, we got it below three minutes and decided that was probably fast enough.

Saturday 11 April 2020, Easter Saturday, dawned bright and sunny as forecast. Not only was it sunny but even quite warm for a spring day in the north-east of England. We had pre-announced the event as starting at noon, which worked out well for lighting (although we hadn’t given much thought to the direction of shadows in our planning).

We decided to stream from one PC, my laptop, for convenience but decided to capture several other camera angles at the same time. We spent over an hour setting up additional cameras. The laptop was set on top of a small stepladder to give an overall face-on view of the action. Its view would undoubtedly be obstructed from time to time by Alice or me as we carried out our barbering so we set up two additional views using phones taped to the backs of dining chairs as improvised supports. My SLR on a tripod was positioned to give a good close-up of Liz’s face. Finally, we set up the girls’ laptop on a picnic table to give a wide view of the action, including the other cameras.

Liz is never one to tke chances with feeling cold, so despite the sunshine, she wore her T-shirt, now neatly marked up with the name and logo of the wig charity on top of a pink sweater. She supplemented her black leggings with blue denim shorts on top. From experience with trimming Marmalade, Alice and I knew just how unpleasant it was to get hair clippings in mouth, nose or eyes. Accordingly, we covered up in dark blue boiler suits, usually worn for grubby jobs around the house or garden, We each had a bandanna over our mouth and nose, another one to cover our hair (Rosie the Riveter style) and a pair of goggles.

At 2 minutes to 12, Liz took her seat as we started all the cameras. In place of a clapper board, she clapped her hands, to give us a reference to synchronise the video recordings later. At exactly noon, I started the live stream and Liz made a short announcement to explain what was happening and why.

Alice and I were ready with the bungee cords and the streaming viewers had their first sight of two masked figures quickly and efficiently rendering Liz helpless on her chair.

Alice positioned herself behind Liz’s chair and pulled her hair into a pony tail sprouting from the top of her head and secured with a scrunchie to stop any hair escaping. She then held her sister’s hair straight up while I went with the clipper.

I was aware that I was potentially blocking the live stream view so I didn’t stand exactly in front or Liz. I started at Liz’s right temple and cut back a couple of centimetres, working across her head to end up just above her left ear. As I cut, Alice lifted the hair so I could see what I was doing and so that the cut hair didn’t get jammed in the clipper. I worked my way across Liz’s head again several times, cutting back a couple of centimetres each time. Eventually, I couldn’t reach over her head and repositioned myself to do the back, first from the left then the right. Finally Alice was able to lift Liz’s complete head of hair up so the cameras could see it and then folded it into a polythene bag.

Liz now had a slightly ragged head of stubble, so we progressed to the second phase. Alice applied a layer of shaving foam over her sister’s head while I wielded a razor. I was pleased to discover that someone else’s head is considerably easier to shave than one’s own legs. Apart from the awkward bit’s around the ears, a head is basically spherical and, being attached to someone else’s body, you can position yourself to make the job easier.

Once we had wiped off the remaining foam, we freed Liz from her bonds and handed her a mirror. She inspected the finished result then mase a short closing appeal, thanking viewers for watching and asking them to donate. Alice and I unmasked ourselves and took a bow when Liz thanked us. The whole thing was over in just 8 minutes from beginning to end.

Two hours later, we had edited the footage we had shot into a single video and uploaded it in place of the live stream, which we took down.

Liz let the donation page run for a week and was delighted at the end of that to find that she had raised nearly £1000 rather than her £500 target.

[Xtc]

Hi, [mention]Weird Aunt Ettie[/mention], gender tag, please.