This piece is a combination of memoir and fiction and as such defies accurate categorisation. If pushed, I would call it a short story, although much of it is lifted from my memories of my time at Newcastle University.

In my second undergraduate year I moved to a terraced house on Sunderland Road, close to the invisible border between Gateshead and Felling. We were on the other side of the river to the university, but well connected by the Metro and unburdened by our outsider status. The housing stock was less expensive and in much better condition than on the north side where peers with deep pockets elected to spend their parents’ money. The whole of our row was owned by Ida English, a fearless and bespectacled widow with an army of retired handymen, any or all of whom (including Ida) would turn up unannounced to resolve a problem of which you were not aware, or make an improvement you had not requested. Ida insisted on interviewing all of her students before granting tenancies, but once you were in she looked after you as though you were one of her own. She taught all of us, to some degree or other, about loyalty. Ida, you were one of the good ones.

It’s a one minute trot from the Metro station at Gateshead Stadium to Sunderland Road, which might explain why I don’t remember ever stopping to take note of Keats Walk or Shelley Drive, but Browning Square soon made itself known. My favourite tutor (another of the good ones) was a Romantics scholar who would have approved of the town planner with poetic ambitions that stretched as far as the naming of unremarkable cut throughs and the plaza under the squat tower block whose residents were visible to those of us amongst Mrs. English’s students who bothered to let daylight into their bedrooms. But I doubt that Dr. Woof ever roamed so far south of the Tyne, where every March narcissi gifted colour to the sides of the road in and out of town: a benediction of sorts for verges otherwise cursed by acid rain, exhaust fumes and fag packets. William and Samuel might have struggled to find poetry in the scene, but Chaucer, who had a road not one mile to the north, might have forged something from the grit and dirt encountered by pilgrims making the journey to St. James’ or Roker Park.

At the eastern end of our terrace was a general store owned by Mr. Khan, a Pakistani Geordie with a huge quiff and nose to match, a torrent of opinion and a readiness to cash cheques and hold on to them until such time as you let him know they would be honoured. On the opposite side of the road was a bakery run by two septuagenarian sisters who called every one of us, male or female, hinny. Between Khan’s and the bakery one could eat and drink cheaply, if not well, and for a while one or both was my first stop en route to college or last call on the way home; but then John’s opened in Browning Square.

The first intimation of John’s barber shop was a stepladder behind a window which was revealed by the elevation of the rusty shutter protecting one of the units under the tower block. Next came a paint pot, a roller and some brushes. Two walls turned white over the course of a fortnight and one – a feature, you might call it – was covered in a vibrant red which matched the Reliant Robin that had appeared in the square at around about the same time. I didn’t question this coincidence until it occurred to me that John had a thing about the colour, but this came later. After a week of no discernible alterations, a large mirror was bolted to the feature wall and a black leather barber’s chair and revolving pole were installed the following day. I have no idea who had been responsible for my Newcastle haircuts up to that point, but when the peg board went up, advertising prices that, like the local accommodation, were a bargain when compared with the other side of the water, my allegiance switched.

It was during this second year at university that I took the decision to change my hairstyle: a moment of reinvention akin to Neil Armstrong’s step. Gone was the quiff which, for me, signalled my love of rock n roll and an Elvis obsession, but which for others was an opportunity to label me as a Nick Kamen or Andrew Ridgeley lookalike; and if you don’t remember who either of them are, good. Times were a changin’ and from absolutely nowhere, us working class boys were discovering dance music and raves. My nod to this cultural hurricane? A number four on top and two down the sides, faded in please, and don’t take any length off the sideburns. This request posed no challenge to John, who put down the scissors and reached for his clippers. The first question he asked, to which I was accustomed and for which I had a good enough answer, was ‘Student?’

I had never before looked forward to visiting the barber shop, but I could have – I did – stayed in John’s for hours. I suppose I had dreamt that university would bring new experiences and friendships, but except for one or two beacons of hope, the latter had not materialised. I could have talked to John all day, except that most of the time I listened. There were opportunities, when he paused for breath, to tell him about how I had started experimenting with a new way of living, but I didn’t want to disappoint him. And so I learned about his life in the navy, into which he had enlisted to avoid the colliery. He had seen the world and some of its fruitier ports, before working at Swan Hunter and then, after redundancy, as a welder in a body shop and fixing engines on the side. If the shop was empty as I passed by on my way home from lectures, I would look for him standing in the doorway in his red nylon coat and wait for him to call me in for a quick tidy up. I understood that if a paying customer came in – most times he would not take my money – I would have to vacate the chair and put the kettle on. One wet Thursday afternoon, while waiting for the rain to clear, I asked him about the Reliant Robin and learned that he had never driven a car, not officially and not in this country. He was a motorbike man, or had been until his wife Frances had insisted that a couple of their age could not be driving around in leathers. Whenever he mentioned her he would stop cutting or shaving, waiting for the tremor to course through his limbs. The Robin, he told me, was classed as a motorbike, for which he had a licence. Frances had refused to get into it, but had let him keep it on the drive. It was safe and reliable, he insisted; as much as he needed and cheap to run. He would have loved to take his son out in it, but he lived in London and had stopped visiting after his mother died.

In my third year I rented one of Ida English’s two-bedroom properties when my housemates moved back to Newcastle. She let me keep the flat on after I graduated and I didn’t see much of John after I started work in the bookshop. I popped in on my day off and once a month I would pay for a haircut. ‘No discount for workers,’ he had informed me when I had rushed over to tell him about the job, but he refused to take payment for the tidy up before my first day. When I got the transfer to Durham I agonised for two weeks about how to tell him, but he seemed elated that I was ‘moving up in the world’. ‘Bigger and better things,’ he said, ‘but I can’t help you shift your stuff. Not with the Robin.’ I thought about introducing him to Dad when he drove up to help with the move, but I feared the consequences of the two worlds colliding. So I walked across Sunderland Road alone, over the grass and into Browning Square. He abandoned his customer and we shook hands in front of the shop.

‘Thanks for everything John,’ I said.

‘I’ll let you into a secret, son,’ he replied. ‘It’s Barry.’

‘What’s Barry?’

‘I’m Barry. I was never John.’

‘But everyone calls you John...’

‘Naebody asked,’ he said. ‘They just assumed.’

‘The shop,’ I said, pointing to the lettering above the window.

‘Who do you think it’s named after,’ he said, pointing to the sign for Keats Walk.

‘Why not Robert, after B...’

‘You were the student. You work with books. Which one would you pick?’

We didn’t keep in touch and I don’t know what happened to John. He’ll be long dead by now and if I was sentimental I would say something about him being up there with Frances, cutting the hair of Ida English’s handymen. But he probably died a in a nursing home, ignored by his son and tolerated by carers who wiped his chin after mealtimes when they remembered. Last night I googled Browning Square: John’s old shop is now a tattoo parlour, so perhaps something of the old biker’s spirit endures.