Two thousand miles for a haircut!

It doesn’t seem very exciting does it; after all it was only an old fashioned Barber’s Shop Job…..short back and sides etc., in the same way I might have had it done 75 years ago and it was carried out not far away from where my first barber’s shop ‘basin cut’ had occurred.

This 'crop' though was in Worksop, not Chesterfield, famous for its Crooked Spire – and my birthplace - and a place I had not set eyes on since 1950.

For the edification of those not familiar with England’s Midlands, Worksop was once an industrial and coal mining place. Now it is a sleepy country town basking on the edge of Sherwood Forest. Ironically I had even got there via a flight into Robin Hood airport! Pre C-19 lockdown of course!

I had decided to get a ‘trim’ on the penultimate day of this nostalgic visit but first I had to shed my greying hoary locks and bedraggled whiskers. It seemed that a trip to the barber’s shop on the spot might not be a bad idea but it turned out that I was in for a bit of a ‘crop’ shock.

I ambled my way around the town’s back streets idiosyncratically searching for an old fashioned red and white striped barber’s pole. Bloody hell, ‘lo and behold’ I discovered one but there the historic nostalgia ended. Not quite earth shattering but certainly very different from my previous ‘hairy’ depilation visit in Spain and certainly a dissimilar salon to the one I had been scalped in, in Derbyshire, so many years ago.

In a narrow fronted enclave adjacent to a haberdashery shop there it was. Tightly wedged facing one long mirror were four old club armchairs. There was no shaving tackle and soap suds pots in sight and all the barbers were attractive young girls. There was not a bloke with scissors, clippers or even a leather strop or cutthroat razor within reach! I was both amused and flummoxed!

Working at a pace winsome ‘Maid Marians’ were slashing and designing spikey, gollywog dayglo dazzling topees and topknots which defied imagination!

Within minutes of entering the ‘barberie’ I was whizzed into the only empty chair available, rapidly cloaked and offered (or threatened with) a choice of cuts, plucked head and spikey styles. ‘Yer waaat?’ I feared for my locks and panic set in!

Tattooed and brillig coloured bonces were order of the day around me.

Shaking like a jelly I nervously requested ‘short back and sides’ this being the only barbering term I could remember from my far distant teenage past.

The scissor wielding lass (a cranium topiary artist of some distinction) never blinked an eyelid at my antediluvian choice or even mouthed a comment apart from addressing me as ‘ME DUCK’ and got down to snipping at a pace. She must have been more than 70 years my junior and worked at a speed that would have put Speedy Gonzalez in the shade. My nerves never even got into first gear as much of my silver grey glory hit the deck. I worried about perhaps losing an ear. I was a petrified study of fright as the lock deprivation continued.

I was about to call for ambulant aid when she whipped away my cloak and yelled “is that allrait me duck” then charged me four quid and some coppers.

Startled by the price I almost edged back into the chair for a beard trim but a half pint of Mansfield Bitter waiting in the Robin Hood Inn around the corner took precedence so I breathed again and fled...leaving a huge tip (50 pence) en route.

For scaring the pants off me ‘Sweenie Todd’ style, having to wear a ‘nose-bag’ C-19, would have been something of a delicate interlude!