Lockdowns. 'Member them? How could we forget? Most of us have experienced at least some kind of COVID-19 induced restrictions since the start of the pandemic. You know the drill. Working from home. Zoom meetings. Only going out for exercise and/or fighting over toilet rolls (or sometimes an exciting combination of the two). Home-schooling. Takeaway only at restaurants. No visits to friends or family.

And no going to the hairdresser.

Gulp.

Faced with this restriction of access to the professional fashioners of follicles, possessors of unruly heads of increasingly untamed hair were left with three choices.

First up, they could just let it rip.

Points for convenience, but when kitchen utensils and small children begin to go missing, the benefits of this option become less obvious.

Secondly, there's the 'let your spouse/partner/sibling/friend/housemate/Amazon delivery dude have a crack' option.

Now, your mileage will vary on this one, based on a number of factors. Factors such as, does said spouse/partner/sibling/friend/housemate/Amazon delivery dude like you? Do they happen to be, by some fortunate freak of circumstance, a hairdresser or barber? Do they badly need to visit the optometrist but are unable to do so due to the very same lockdown that sees them blurrily wielding sharp implements in close proximity to your jugulars and eyeballs? Are you Donald Trump? And so on. 

And last of all, there's the good old DIY option. The solo-cut. The selfie-trim. The what-the-hell-nobody-is-gonna-see-me-for-months-anyway-Hail-Mary-hack.

You've gotta admire this choice. Well, okay, you don't. You don't have to admire it. Scoffing is a valid option. Sniggering, even. But let's at least acknowledge the independent, self-starting spirit of the purveyors of the DIY cut. These are the peeps who refuse to pay the plumber that outrageous $80 callout fee when the tap won't stop dripping. The intrepid folk who reach for a shifter and take on the task themselves. The ones who, $30k and a few concussions later, wind up with a whole new kitchen and a smug and entirely misplaced sense of self-satisfaction. Legends in their own lounge rooms.

However, regardless of the degree of motivation and/or sanity they might possess, the selfie-trimmer is faced with an intractable problem. An insoluble conundrum. A prodigious pothole on the path to pursuing pristine presentation. What is this problem?

Not to put too fine a point on it, the problem is the laws of physics. In particular, light's annoying propensity to travel in a straight line. In other words, the fact you can't see the back of your own head.

Oh sure, you can fart-arse about with two mirrors. But however questionable the coiffeur-sculpting skills of the budding solo-hairdresser might be, you can bet your arse they're going to be even more questionabler if one of their hands is holding a mirror while the other one has to cut stuff in reverse. That way lies decapitation. Or stitches and a quick trip to the ER, at best. Which, I guess, is at least an excuse to leave the house.

So, with one mirror and without a death wish, you can only see the front and top and sides of your head. Which means, if you wanna see what you're cutting, you can only cut the hair on the front and top and sides of your head. And if you cut the hair on the front and top and sides of your head, what have you got?

Well, probably a healthy bout of celibacy. But in addition to that, you of course have yourself a good, old-fashioned, traditional mullet, lockdown style.

Lockdown mullets lose points for their general scruffiness, their general lack of uniformity and their general existence. On the other hand, they gain points for their not always entirely voluntary genesis and the fact they were, for the most part, safely squirrelled away in people's houses and therefore not visible. Unless, that is, you're a former British PM who should really know better.

Mullet-O-Meter™ says:-