The cut / El corte

You make do with what you have Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

My usual choice of haircutting establishment is a barbers, I used Katie’s Kutz in Stainland for a while until I tried the barber’s in Greetland. They were both okay but in my hair cutting history there have been two standouts, Vic’s in Liverpool, where I had my first decent flat top. He was an old feller who was the first to use a cutthroat razor on my neck (previously, as a callow yoot, my hair had been trimmed by family friends or the Formby unisex salon). Vic (the bic, although he never used a bic) was a rockabilly haven and it set the standard for the next fifteen years of hairstyle (I’d say hairstyles but lets be honest, I only had one). The second was the Jan’s Polish barbers in Leeds, Michael began cutting my hair there in 1988 and gave me my last cut some time around 1999. Consistency is desirable.

I’ve had some less than great experiences: Vic’s assistant once gave me an un-nameable horror when he was ill, Ged’s in Headingley where Ged used to rest his massive gut on your shoulders (although you did get sherry and cigars at christmas).

I was getting a bit scraggly so I’ve been keeping an eye out for a barbers as I’ve been wandering. A couple looked promising but were closed each time I passed by. Today I went to Los Prados (The local mall, multiplex and stuff… they have free wifi too) to do a little shopping, and I passed a hairdressers, not a barbers, but the sign in the window said Cut/Wash/Dry €9.99 and I had time so…

It was huge, well it looked huge but in fact every wall was floor to ceiling mirrors. The staff probably have bruises from the times they get confused and smack into the walls. So I had a cut, a wash (I think that was actually the first time in 20 years I had my hair washed by someone) and… fine, the cut’s fine, she used gel so my hair’s all stiff now, but it really felt a little unsatisfying, she was quite tentative with the clippers, like she hadn’t used them much and she was all but silent.

When we were in BA I ended up going to a barber just around the corner from one of the schools I taught in, we had a dialogue, he remembered me, he remembered what we chatted about (mostly I seem to remember him saying ‘aren’t Argentine girls wonderful’. This is an essential part of the deal. This is what I want in a barbers, faded posters and cardboard comb holders and old hands that use clippers like they were born with them. And mostly that means a male environment, someone who can turn out fifty OAP specials a day, someone who doesn’t care if the mound of hair under the chair is deep enough to lose children in. A place where, if there’s music, it’s the local radio station on a mono cassette recorder with a broken eject mechanism.

I’ll keep looking.