ON HAVING A HAIRCUT

There have been three epochs in my hair history. I don’t count grooming as an infant in the discussion mainly because I can’t remember any of that. Rather, the following recounts commence when I was about seven or eight years old and conclude a few days ago in my 64th year.

However, there are important background facts that require illuminating right from the start, namely,

1.      I am extremely hairy and have always been extremely hairy. I can grow hair in places and at densities that would alarm most anthropoid primates. I’ve exhibited this characteristic from a very early age. Adolescence wasn’t a major portal to hairy manhood for me but a small and already familiar garden gate with its latch broken.

2.      In terms of any measure of fashion awareness, knowledge or observance that you may be familiar with, I routinely trail the pack by about a decade……….. and that’s in a good year.

My first recollection of having a haircut was at an Italian barber’s shop located near the corner of Hampden Road and Great North Road at Wareemba in Sydney. It would have been around 1960 and this guy introduced me to the ‘square cut’ (that is, the first epoch). I’m confident that I persisted with this style for about ten years. The square cut was pretty much de rigueur for inner westie tyke kiddos in those days. The thing that I remember most, though, was how noisy that barber shop was. The bloke was always talking and the electric clippers came off second best in the decibel stakes. I never knew what he was talking about and, even though his chat was aimed at his sprog client, my Italian wasn’t that firm and, perhaps, his diction needed workshopping. It didn’t stop him.

The second epoch lasted for about twenty years and featured a strong unwillingness, on my part, to go anywhere near a barber shop or hairdressing boutique. To briefly continue the catholic theme, I aspired to take on a Jesus Christ type look but free from the accompanying liturgical or dogma-rich primary sources. If there were parables to be listened to, gospels to be discussed or Regina Coelis to be recited, I navigated around their perimeters and saw a man about a dog instead. With my non-athletic frame and skinny pins, I resembled more of a hairy daddy long legs than a Jim Morrison in brooding ‘Paris’ mode.

As with most histories, the final epoch doesn’t really resolve anything but serves to prepare the punter (i.e. me) for the journey across the Styx. I now most certainly have ample space on my forehead to affix the florin and, given its lack of hair presence for extra ‘bite’, super glue will probably be the go.

Reasonably frequent visits to the barber shop have been re-established over the last few decades and my latest boutique of choice is a hair harem in busy Greystanes. It’s a Leb-run affair and one of the oddest clipping joints I’ve ever patronised. The barbers (about four, I think) all look like body builders, are in their thirties and deliver bloody good haircuts. The place is always full of punters and most of them are throwing around the Arabic like it’s going out of style. I’ve been reluctant to disclose to the artisans that my paternal grandmother enjoyed a ‘fully tabouli’ status because, on learning this, they might stop calling me ‘Boss’……….. and I like being referred to as ‘Boss’! And what distinguishes this place? I’m sure that you will never guess. It’s the noise and it never stops. Arguments, resistance training techniques, who’s paying for the next HSP and laughter all secure jerseys as stimuli for this deafening parlour. 

I’ve always been suspicious of fellow citizens who assert that things in Oz have changed over the years and that a golden past has been replaced by an uncertain future. The sub-text to a lot of this bunk infers that migration intakes have altered our quality of life. In my critical experience of clippers over sixty years, I’ll counter with the equally impressive Nothing much has changed at all. After everything is considered, what is more elementary than a barber shop?