"A HAIR-RAISING" EXPERIENCE can be terrifying, horrifying, spine-tingling, frightening, alarming or just plain scary.

The example used by one dictionary was, "Landing on that makeshift runway was the most hair-raising experience of my life."

The problem with the English language is that it does not include the idiom "hair-lowering" except as in a haircut, what we in Trinidad call a "trim", although in other countries that word is generally associated with hedges and fences, slimness and fitness, neatness and orderliness.

But then "trim" can also be "prune" and too many prunes can be a hair-raising experience if you are in downtown Port-of-Spain or in a Trinidad bank where facilities for the self-disposal of human bodily waste are not available to the public.

Instead of a makeshift runway to do your landing, you might have to use a makeshift landing and then run away. Any hair-raising experience can generate considerable static.

I am in Antigua where I had a hair-raising and hair-lowering experience simultaneously. I had fought for weeks against my wife's increasingly belligerent admonitions to get a haircut. I resisted on the grounds that the individual in Belize who attends to my son's hirsute depletion is really a trimmer or clipper, better at hedges and fences than at barbering since he eschews scissors completely for a mechanical device to which he attaches various appendages set to different levels. I wanted the genuine article, someone articulate on the subjects of cricket, football and other manly and womanly pursuits, who would in the interim attend to what is left of my locks with comb and scissors, clipping instead of clacking.

I argued that the true barber is a professional and I would prefer to wait until such time as I found one.

Unfortunately, I arrived in Antigua for a workshop with my hair helter-skelter and looking like some hilltop hermit. I then went in search of a barber and was fortunate enough to see a sign that advertised the presence of exactly such a person.

Feeling a sense of relief , I entered the establishment with head held high and wispy silvery strands blowing in the wind.

Having warned the barber that I wanted it "medium" and having travelled far and for many hours that day, I slumped into the barber's chair with my eyes closed. That was a mistake. The man took one of the same instruments that I despise and cut a swathe down the middle of my head where, apart from the bald area, once a spot but now a blot, most of my remaining hair has congregated.

In Trinidad, we call that mass of hair that sticks out above the forehead, a "muff". The English language does not favour that term for hair on the head of men or in that particular place.

According to one dictionary, a "muff" is "an article of women's apparel shaped like a tube and used to keep hands warm", a "slang term referring to female pubic hair" and "a slang sports expression for fumbling or dropping the ball".

Regardless of race, the Trinidadian man loves his "muff" and while what the Americans call "muff divers" are increasing in number, divers' muffs are still very much in evidence. I can say, in all seriousness, that this person who cut my hair (I refuse to use the term "barber" to describe him) muffed that particular opportunity. He did not ad-hair to my instructions, and should really be in the restaurant business where "medium" means neither "rare" nor "well done".

The long and short of it is that I had the experience, in one fell swoop or swipe, of refuting another English idiom. "Here today, gone tomorrow," became hair today gone today. And then, like refereeing records at the World Cup, particularly the Netherlands-Portugal game, I shattered another idiom.

As a perfectionist, I always like to be a "cut above the rest" and ended up in Antigua with a cut below the rest. I could not even remonstrate with the man by shouting: "Look hair!", because there was none to see unless I was willing to split hairs.

If you use the ancient unit of measurement which equates one-48th of an inch to a hair's breadth, I was less than that from being really angry. But I no longer have the hair-trigger temper of my youth. Like Samson's strength, it has gone with the wind-blown, shoulder length hair that I cultivated during my university days.

I no longer bristle like the Fu Manchu moustache that adorned my upper lip. Now, philosophically, I greet even the most unwelcome news with: "I hair you."

My last resort, to get back my muff, is the religiosity of Antiguans. I am seeking a particular pastor who, I believe, will help me to quickly recuperate from my unfortunate loss. I heard about him from an Antiguan friend who told me this story, swearing to its veracity.

This particular preacher is known throughout the country for his lengthy sermons. One Sunday, he noticed a man get up and leave during the middle of his message. The man returned just before the conclusion of the service.

Afterwards the pastor asked the man where he had gone. "I went to get a haircut," was the reply.

The irate pastor enquired, "Why didn't you do that before the service?" "Because," the gentleman said, "I didn't need one then."

Tony Deyal was last seen in Antigua gazing at the tourist ladies and asking: "What do you call it when a blonde dyes her hair black?" Artificial intelligence.