Extraordinary LIVES
MY FATHER was born in Lythrodontas near Nicosia in Cyprus, the eldest of seven children. His father was a farmer, but that lifestyle didn’t appeal to Dad. Instead he was fascinated by the village barbershop and used to sit there watching him at work. When he was just eight, he started cutting the customers’ hair and shaving the old men — he was so short he had to stand on a crate. At the age of 12, he left school and opened a rival barbershop! Dad dreamt of better prospects, so when he was 15 and despite not speaking English, he came to Britain to live with family in Holloway, North London, where he started a hairdressing business. A few years later, he met my mum Theodora, who was also from Cyprus and a hairdresser, and they married in 1961. They moved to the Old Kent Road in South London, opened a salon — Dad doing the men’s hair and Mum the ladies — and lived in the flat upstairs. My parents had three children: I am the eldest and have two brothers, Simon and Nicolas. In the late Sixties, we left London for Welling, Kent, where my parents bought a house and opened a salon. My father loved
people. His regular customers were like family to him. They shared a special, trusting relationship and he knew pretty much everything going on in their lives. Fathers would take their sons to him for their first haircuts and in time they would take their sons. After my mother became unwell in the mid-Eighties, Dad gave up the salon, but he didn’t stop working. He got a job at a local barbershop, finally retiring at the age of 75. Even then he continued to cut our neighbours’ hair, never taking money for it. The men would sit in our garage, where Dad had a little heater, and were offered coffee and biscuits while he trimmed their hair. Sometimes he would pull people off the streets, saying he felt sorry for them because they needed a haircut! When the Jehovah’s Witnesses called round, much to their surprise he did their hair as well. He was the most lovely, kind man. Dad was a born barber and until the end of his life he had that skill at his fingertips. I think that’s why he loved gardening so much. All that trimming and pruning of foliage — that’s what barbers do. Put a pair of clippers in their hands and they’re happy. He inspired me and Simon to go into the business and we had our own hairdressing salon. As all three of his children said proudly at his funeral, he was the best dad ever.
■ ANDREAS SOTERIOU, born August 24, 1938; died October 8, 2020, aged 82.