Crew cut, and be quick!

I’M that person who spends two bucks to save one, and then still thinks, “What a deal!” Recently, to part with just R50 on the grudge purchase of a haircut, I came away with more than I had bargained for. Or less.

Because, as I sat having my crowning glory snipped by the barber of Bertrams, some punk was busy stealing my car from where I’d parked it outside.

Samson has ropes of hair cut and gets away with a few weeks of enforced celibacy; I have a trim, at most, and I’m parted from two decades of motorised infamy.

Still, I doubted my eyes. I walked back to the barber shop and out again, hoping my earlier walk had been a ghastly flashback. What can replace that icy feeling when you first realise your conveyance is no more? Well, staring long and hard, afterwards, at that bare rectangle of parking is just as good.

You linger where the car once was, savouring the full lousiness of the moment, but you realise you look odd, gawking at an empty space. And the last thing I wanted, then, was to be arrested for loitering, especially on a Friday.

Immediately, I dreaded having to deal with car people (salesmen, after-sales blokes, financial types). But that was nothing alongside the realisation that my golf clubs, ever ready to shoot a big number, were in the boot. So now the Toyota, and the driver, were gone.

Like the condemned man, I made my one phone call. On a whim, really, I realised that even if I didn’t have much airtime, I had the number of the satellite-track- ing company that relieves me of several hundred rands a month. (Grudge purchase, phone me back!) In fact, I had been meaning to call them to begin unbundling myself from their service, in the interests of further economy.

I wasn’t convinced anymore that my car was still being monitored by them at all, because the all-important plastic item they supply you with had broken off my key ring, so I had never been that sure where it was. The result was that the satellite bunch had started calling me and SMSing me a lot, asking if I was alright, which I wasn’t, but what could they do about it?

So to stop being harassed with care, I had simply put the plastic thing in the car’s ashtray, which ended the calls, at least. And forgot about it, until that day.

Resigned to disappointment, I called them anyway and, as I suspected, our call was to be recorded for quality purposes. My exasperation was of the highest quality, as we spoke and I began the long walk home, navigating the Mogadishu that is a Joburg pavement.

Soon, the phone rang again, and the car had been found, abandoned in Diepkloof, Soweto. Days later, when I got it back from the police pound, the golf clubs were indeed gone. Fat loss, I thought: I had already bought a bargain secondhand set, which was a great saving, and my score had improved, too.

Change my barber, and not risk having my car stolen again? No chance. There’s no place in Joburg you can get as close a shave at that price. I’m already looking forward to walking there the next time. LS