Haircut

Matters had progressed to the point where they were beyond a joke. My hair had, through my inaction, become a statement. About balding, about aging, about not succumbing to the lingering pressures of The Face, about not caring. But it wasn't a statement that I wanted to make.

Like a lot of people - or perhaps I mean men - once I have found a place that will cut my hair and not look appalled when I ask then to trim my eyebrows, I keep going back. The problem is that Byron's in Kirkby Lonsdale has a three week waiting list but I am often unclear as to what I will be doing in three hours' time. Bumping into the proprietor one Sunday, I begged for an appointment out of charity but none was forthcoming.

This morning, looking in the mirror, I decided enough was enough. Today was the day I either had my hair cut or left my job and started work as a Christopher Lloyd tribute act. What I needed was a barber's shop, somewhere that didn't do appointments but that just had a good old fashioned queue. I ensured there was a book with plenty of unread pages in my manbag* and resolved to have my hair cut.

In the office, mention was made of the new Turkish barbers in town. (Around these parts, "new" means less than five years old.) My ears pricked up: many years ago, I did some work on a project based in Turkey and, over the course of a year, spent several weeks there. I liked the approach to grooming taken by the Turkish man, excepting the fashion for the moustache but certainly including the idea that a man should shave after work, his wife being more important than his job.

And so I went to The Turkish Barber Shop. Inside two authentically Turkish chaps were cutting hair: that pretty much ticked the boxes for me. Well, box. After a pleasant twenty minutes reading in a sofa that came perilously close to inducing a nap, I was invited up to the barber's chair. "A number 3 at the back and sides, please" I requested nonchalantly, "and please leave about a third of what's left on top."

It was an impressive display. The clippers were not used, instead the scissors and comb danced around my head, clicking to a lively rhythm, even when they weren't cutting. Hair done, with nary a pause, the barber chap moved to my eyebrows. There was none of that caution with the comb to lift up the hairs; he was just straight in with the scissors (while I tried to keep calm).

And that was all I was hoping for but then he reached for a bottle of meths and an ear-bud. Dipping the bud into the meths, he then lit it and, using a technique I haven't experienced since Turkey, he proceeded to burn the hair from my ears. I should say at this point that I think this was just part of the process as I'm not one of those chaps with plumes of ear topiary (yet).

Finally, he took the scissors to my nostrils (again, I think slightly unnecessarily) and displayed his deftness, snipping away without hitting any major arteries.

I don't smoke but at the end of it, I felt like a cigarette might be in order. And all for ten pounds!

*yes, I do. What of it?