Open Writing

The very first haircut of my life still stands out vividly.

I hadn’t far to go to see the barber. Only out of the house and into the garden.

And there he was, my father, waiting with scissors and comb in hand.

I should explain at this stage that my father was a man of many parts. A sort of working class entrepreneur. The kind of chap would could, and did, turn his hand to most things.

The modern do-it-yourself addict would have been beaten hands down by my dad. After a hard day’s work in the mill he’d come home in summer and spend another three or four hours a day in the garden.

When he wasn’t in the garden he’d be in the greenhouse. And when he wasn’t tending plants he’d be mending shoes. On a proper cobbler’s last, set in a vice on a workbench in the greenhouse.

He did other things as well, mostly either to save or make money, which was a scarce commodity in our house. One of those other things was cutting hair.

Don’t ask me how he found out how to do it. All I know is that at weekends a fair number of his pals turned up in our garden to be “polled” as they put it.

So I suppose it was only natural that when the time came for me to have my first proper haircut he should do the job. I was probably three or four years old. But I’m afraid I was an extremely troublesome customer.

I couldn’t stand the prickly feeling when bits of hair slipped down my neck. The result was that I squirmed continuously, like a tomcat about to be neutered. Which by the way was another job my father did occasionally. Like I said, a man of many parts.

My dad had all the basic haircutting equipment. Hand-clippers, scissors, comb, an old apron of my mother’s which he tied round my neck -- and a special barber’s chair all of his own.

It was plain, unpainted wood with a straight back and a hard seat. Looking back, I’m not surprised I kicked up so much fuss. The whole performance was extremely uncomfortable.

Despite my protests, the monthly ritual was repeated at home -- in the garden when the weather was fine and in the greenhouse when it was wet -- until I was old enough to go by myself on the bus to Marsden, a mile away.

Bellas-town was what Marsden was called by old-timers like my father. That was because there was once an eccentric, hard-drinking vicar called Bellas who, I gather ran the town a bit like a Wild West sheriff. So eventually my dad said, “Off tha’ goes to Bellas-town for thi’ hair cut,” and off I went.

If I thought a haircut there was going to be any more to my liking I had another think coming. The barber was housed in a little wooden hut in Peel Street. And it was impossible to arrive without finding a queue stretching to the door.

Admittedly, the chair was a bit more luxurious than my dad’s. But the barber would insist on finishing off by singeing the freshly cropped stubble with a taper. It was positively frightening. I was convinced that one day I would be turned into a flaming torch.

Later in life I graduated to a much more conventional and modern salon in Slaithwaite where I remember being awestruck by the discovery that the council’s top brass had their hair cut at the same place.

One in particular indulged in what I considered to be the height of extravagance by having his hair shampooed after it had been cut.

Tonsorial tittle-tattle has always been a fruitful source of stories for newsmen. And when I started work as a cub reporter I used to pin back my ears in eager anticipation of some as yet unprinted gossip.

Since then I’ve had a succession of barbers. Not counting the scissor-wielding sadist in my RAF square-bashing days who scalped me in about five minutes flat. If he was on a productivity bonus he must have been quids in because he got through 20 of us in an hour or so.

It was just like shearing sheep. When we left looking like a band of Red Indians the shop floor must have been a couple of inches deep in hair that he’d taken off.

Barbers, by nature, seem to be talkative characters. And some I’ve met were inventive with it.

One Colne Valley hairdresser was a cut above the rest in this respect. When the Poles came over here to work in the mills he soon had a notice in Polish tucked in the corner of his mirror. None of the locals had a clue what it said but when we saw “Three for 2/6d” written underneath, it didn’t take us long to work it out.

Nowadays the barber’s pole is almost a thing of the past. It’s hairdos by appointment only in a unisex salon and no dry cuts. It’s no good hoping to pick up a story either, because the noise of the drier drowns all attempts at conversation.

My father’s probably turning in his grave.