Travelling for a hair-cut – no place like home!
Shock, horror – or at least open-mouthed disbelief.
The barber down the road, where I have gone for the last two years after finally weaning myself off my regular in London, won’t cut my hair anymore.
I haven’t had a haircut since February. Hanging out at the barber’s is not my favourite past time and I was itching at the mere thought of pesky little needle-sharp hairs finding their way into my clothes and making me twitch for the rest of the day, but something had to be done. I could hardly see through my fringe and had started using a comb rather than just ruffling my scalp with my fingers. So I went.
It was a quiet lunchtime. I took a seat, grabbed a newspaper and started to unbutton my coat.
“Excuse me?”
I looked up. One of the three hairdressers, a youngster with a trendy gash in his eyebrows and an earring in the upper rim of his right ear was looking at me as if I was an alien from outer space: “Are you here havin’ your hair cut?”
“Ehm…” I looked around. The place wasn’t busy. There was only one other woman waiting, and she wasn’t there for a hair-do. It wasn’t the kind of establishment where you had to make an appointment, nor was it likely that they would close for staff-training; not while they could be earning good money. “Er…yeah?”
“We don’t cut women’s hair.”
“ What? Since when? I ‘m a regular!”
The youngster addressed one of his colleagues in Turkish. That was reassuring, they may at least know the proprietor, but none of the three looked familiar to me and it was clear that I did not look familiar to them either. None of them, the boy explained patiently, had cut women’s hair. They used to have a female hairdresser but she had left. I explained that she had never cut my hair either. It had always been a bloke. “How come you can’t cut hair?” I asked: “If you’re a hairdresser.”
“What, me?” the boy said, “you want me to cut your hair?”
“Yeah.”
“I said we no longer have a woman hairdresser.”
We were getting our wires crossed. It was pointless.
I left.
Since puberty, I have always had my hair cut in unisex salons. I have no time for elaborate styling, it doesn’t fit with my lifestyle. Moreover, I am not in a position to shell out over £ 20 for a simple cut, and have no inclination to do so even when I am in paid employment. A standard boy-ish cut does me nicely, thank you. Saying that, good hairdressers are hard to find. It had taken a full year to make the transition from my regular in New Cross to this barber in Stirling. I used to joke with the New Cross guys that I was probably their furthest commuter for a haircut. And now it seemed I would have to go back.
We are not due back in London for a month. A whole month from today. And my fringe is starting to grow annoyingly into my eyes.
Moreover, I’m scared of one of the hairdressers in New Cross. He is one of the smartest guys I ever met. When I moaned about my lab-project he discussed lipid hormones with me as if he was a biochem professor cutting hair in his spare time. When I gushed about our impending trip to Taiwan he cross-examined me about Sun Yatsen and Chiang Kaishek. “Sun who?” I asked: “Chiang what?” I was totally ignorant about Chinese and Taiwanese history. Then again, the trip was a bit of a spur-of-the-moment decision. I said so.
“No excuse not to know more,” he answered gruffily; jealousy tinged with mockery: “You better read up on it. I’ll ask when you get back!” So I did, but for a whole month after our return I slunk past the shop, delaying to have my hair cut. Boy, was I relieved when I finally plucked up the courage to walk in and found he was on holiday!
It will be great to see the man again. I miss London. These little things go to show that Stirling never was and never will be my home. The other day I walked into a small pub on Baker Street just below Castle Hill five minutes from our flat and the locals, convivaly pissed by then (it was nearly seven) asked me whether I enjoyed my stay. It will be five years before they will recognize me on the street, sub-consciously, as a resident. That was about how long it took in New Cross, the place I have lived in or was associated with the longest since going to boarding school aged nine. Right now, I’m home-sick!
Oh well, I’m off to cut my fringe.
Tags: Travels on my Doorstep, Tag Index
Denni