‘To the Bald One,” begins the card from my son. Some years, by way of variety, it is “Dear Baldman”, which makes me sound like a Marvel superhero with a cranium that dazzles all villains within 50 paces. Either way, it is nice of him to remember my birthday, and I’m glad to see that the top of my head still amuses.

There was a time when losing my hair was no laughing matter. The loss of locks started when I was about 21 and in my first job – with an unreasonable boss. Friends would casually joke about my receding hairline. Then I noticed the heavy fall of hair on my pillow in the mornings caused by – and causing even more – stress. I admitted to having a “widow’s peak”, that V-shaped point in the hairline. Then I brushed my hair forward, not to hide the bare skin, of course, but to copy the Beatles, who were then at their peak. OK, and to hide the bare skin.

A local barber, of the traditional sort, who would ask: “Anything for the weekend, sir?” gave me a short back and sides, which revealed that my hairline was on the run. This prompted my now-late wife – who made rather too much of the fact that she was a whole year and 13 days younger than me – to laugh that I looked “like a little old man”. That was so incorrect. I am not little. Nor was I old enough to be bald.

The comb-over was a work of artifice, but it didn’t stay combed or over when the wind blew

She made up for it by suggesting that, if I was all that bothered, a wig may be the way forward. Now was the hour; if you left the artificial-thatch solution until you had a gleaming billiard ball of a pate, and then suddenly went forth into the world with long, thick tresses, people would notice. I sent off for a brochure from a wigmaker, but instead a furtive-looking man knocked on the door one Sunday morning. He was wearing an unnaturally luxuriant red wig, and his spiel consisted of slating rival hairpiece suppliers. This put me off, as did the thought that I would be lumbered for the rest of my life with a wig. Wigs plural, presumably, as my hair would need to age with me, which meant decades of jiggery-wiggery-pokery costing more than the occasional haircut.

Back at the barber – a different one – I experienced the greatest cover-up since Watergate. He was a man of few words, most of them Greek, but my cranium did the talking, and he obeyed. Carefully picking the ends of tendrils from one side of the skull, he lured them over the barren summit to start a new life with their relatives on the far side. As the years went by, my parting had to descend ever further in search of hair to part. The comb-over was a work of artifice, but it didn’t stay combed or over when the wind blew, I got on my bicycle, opened the window, turned on a fan or nodded too vigorously. I felt like an impostor; an enemy agent whose cover could be literally blown at any moment.

But I was well aware that I was fooling no one. At 35, I threw in the towel. I didn’t know the Greek for “make with the scissors”, but I indicated that I was looking for a scorched-earth look or, as the barber put it: “Ah, no parting!” He set to with his comb and razor until I had shed more follicles than he had snipped off in the previous couple of years.

I left his premises with a wonderful feeling of freedom. People would no longer peer knowingly through the sparse covering and detect the pink skin beneath. Yes, I was bald. “Get over it,” I thought. “I have.” I could hold my head high – and not, as before, just to stop anyone noticing the open space at the top of it. It reminded me of how liberated I had felt when I had gone, with an unclad wife and bare toddler, to a nudist beach in Cornwall.

Back at the office, I no longer had to sneak into the gents’ to repair my hairstyle. Colleagues at first pretended not to recognise me. Some inquired if I was a Bruce Willis tribute act. My wife was a bit taken aback, but I informed her that I was getting my ageing over early. My niece gave me a badge declaring “Bald is beautiful.”

That was more than half my life ago. My civil partner knows me only in my hair-free reincarnation. Now, my small grandson is more intrigued by the baldness of his uncle, who has inherited the condition. This came to my son later in his life than it did to me, but, like other men of his generation, he takes no prisoners: avoiding camouflage absolutely, he gives himself a close-shorn “number one” with the electric razor all over his bonce. He still looks young to me, so maybe I don’t look too ancient to him.

Although my hair is less severely trimmed than his, I know he will always refer to me as “the Bald One”. And we will always find it funny.