The haircut
As has been mentioned, I have just moved house.
Prior to this move, I was supposed to have a haircut but the appalling weather put a stop to that as I couldn’t get out of the drive let alone the 7 miles to the hairdressers (the young lady who used to do my hair had by the way a fabulous head of dark red hair and would have graced James picture file).
Even cancelling was not an option as the phone rang and rang and I can only presume the staff could not get in to work.
So now ensconced in the new abode and and a week and a half on from my cancelled appointment I needed a trim – at least – post haste.
Not knowing anywhere in the area and being too busy and too tired to go looking I espied only a hundred yards away from my house a very modern looking barbers shop, told the wife who said why don’t you give it a go as it looks all right and if you’re not happy, look for somewhere else later, all good sense so as it said outside ‘no appointment necessary’ came the afternoon, I crossed the road and made my way to the aforementioned barbers shop, support a dying breed I thought in this world of unisex establishments.
Before going on I must mention that my hair is almost the last thing (no it is the last thing) that has still got something going for it on a body that has reached that stage that when you look in the mirror you see your father staring back and pretend you’ve had a senior moment.
The hair, despite a change of colour since my youth, is still thick, no bald patches and not much evidence of recession, all good.
The entrance I repeat was smart modern and welcoming, opening the door and entering was the equivalent of Alice through the looking glass, the single chair with the barber cutting a clients hair was a familiar sight but the worn sofas and being greeted by the owners large and very friendly dog who got up to come across and say hello in a room that apart from the chair looked like someone’s back parlour was not.
After being greeted by man and dog I sat down in one of the well worn sofas and waited whilst the incumbent of the chair was finished and it was my turn.
I think my first worries this might not have been such a good idea came when the protective gown was produced, not of a type I had seen before, black and made of a material that had a covering of a sort of plastic used on mortuary garbs – it didn’t bode fair.
The barber, to be fair, was friendly in the way barbers are you know – weathers still bad – you’re new are you, local etc – and then hopes rising again asked me what sort of cut I wanted and how do you normally have it cut.
Not wanting to be demanding and playing safe, I asked for a trim (can’t be safer than that ! ) and said I normally have the sides and back layered up with scissors and just keep it simple.
Fine he said and before I could protest was running the most enormous clippers up the back of my head proclaiming he could produce the same effect this way, after the first pass all was lost so I endured the next few minutes and wondered as my hair was reduced to a number one or that’s what it looked like to me.
If this was a trim, what was a a normal haircut? Other enquiries followed as to how I would like certain sections of my scalp “fashioned” and all requests were treated with the same disdain whilst the conversation about weather, parking, pensions sailed endlessly on great chunks of my hair hitting the floor.
Finally it was all over. I paid and left, noting the dog had a beautiful coat, something I could now envy and returned home entering the kitchen my wife without turning round said – everything go well – then turned looked and burst out laughing.
The only comforting remark I got was – it will grow back eventually – and then she burst out laughing again.
Filed under: Diversions, Society & human issues, Wiggia
XX I was supposed to have a haircut but the appalling weather put a stop to that as I couldn’t get out of the driveXX
WHAT!? You do not have a pair of scissors in the house?
Read the rest, and can only sympathise. we have a very good, and friendly Turkisch barber here. BUT he thinks No1 is “the in thing”. Regardless od WHAT you ask for.
Na. Serious, WHEN you catch him sober (Every cutomer gets offered the Raki bottle!), he is a bloody good barber…..timing is important.
You have my sympathies, Wiggia ( an apt name??) as I am somewhat in the same condition. ie: I am aging but with a fine head of hair for which I see resemblance, not to my deceased father’s thin and balding to but to his brother’s which lasted thick and full until he too carked it.
I do not get mine ‘done’ very often. Indeed for several years, not long back, I let it grow to outrageously inappropriate (for my age and status in life) length, not letting any barber or even unisex scissormistress near it. I decided to grow a ‘pony-tail’, just to see if I could. This proved to be more successful than my last great ‘change’ when upon retiring from HM’s RAF, I grew a beard. I was under forty and it came on strong, thick and white !! With red streaks !
Gordon Bennetttttt !
But the ponytail was well received by my friends and acquaintences along with the equally wild and clipper-protected beard (which periodically I grew again and again, ridding myself of it just as frequently) and they fitted my newer role as ‘Hermit’ on an island where many are ‘hippies’ and other assorted wastrels, socialists and greenies.
It is only quite recently that I have again taken the hair in hand and tidied them up. My ponytail is in a box in the sideboard. The beard is now a long way from the middle of my chest where it used to be balancing the hair down my back.
A local lady, ex-nurse from the local clinic which closed down due to the unfulfilled promises of our wonderful PM, Gloriana Julia, she of the wasted/mendacious/completely erroneous word, opened a shop nearby where she advertises ‘trichology’. As few ever bother to have such detailed inspections of their scalp and follicles for obscene professional fees, she is obliged to offer traditional hirdressing too, and it was to her that I turned.
She does a half-decent job. It has not been totally satisfactory as far as hair sculture goes, but as you said, hair grows and botch-jobs soon grow out. The photo that appears on my ‘bio’ page was taken quite recently.
I hope your finer appearance reappears soon sir. Then you might look as fine as wot I are.
(Smug smile from one whose daughter is a hairdresser)
Oh I am enjoying this one a lot [says he with a Number 0 haircut].
Hair?? What is that? I have had a natural, traditional monks haircut from the age if 16 and a full beard from 18.
It’s been some decades since I had a proper haircut. I just go for a number 4 all the time. Plain, simple, quick, and cheap.
Perhaps your experience explains why they are a dying breed!!
There are actually two very good ones near to where I live
I’m sorry but I burst out laughing at “….I paid and left, noting the dog had a beautiful coat, something I could now envy…”
So well written I felt that I was there watching.
All my hair on top fell out years ago, so I just shave the rest of what is left when I shave my face.
I have not paid for a haircut ever, since my parents stopped paying when I was 16, A few years as an uncut hippy, then a rough trim by the gorgeous girl soon to be my wife, etc. until now she just uses the No. 2 setting and a simple sheep shearing action to keep my appearance worthy of her goregeousity. How much has this saved me over the 41 years since parents stopped paying? Add in the lack of smoking and a lifelong determination to avoid what may others regard as fun, and a determination never to buy anything at the “good” end of the spectrum and suddenly my millions of pennies become explicable (as I hope HMRC agree),
The conversation reminds me of school days and ‘The Man from Ironbark’ by Banjo Paterson
As barbers moved to ‘rare and endangered’, I found that having my follicles fondled by the young ladies was not an entirely unpleasant activity and it still isn’t although they now look as though they should still be at school.
I’ve now bought a set of clippers and do the deed myself. Financially I am in front and my technique is improving. Apart from a hat, the difference between a bad hair cut and a good one is about 2 weeks.