Tatty 'eads

Written in summer 2019.

A pair of wood pigeons is building a nest above our patio doors. They’ve been nosing about for weeks and despite being disturbed and flapping off in an almighty panic five or six times a day, they seem determined to claim the spot as their own. I don’t mind having to sweep the steps and wipe away the guano, but the early morning hi-jinks of their cousins on the roof have been driving me mad.

According to my app, sunrise was 04:54 this morning, but it gets light earlier than that. The blackout curtains are still under the chair in my office, wrapped in the plastic they came in – a contemporary parcel of guilt if ever there was one. When I first checked the clock it was 04:42 and the woodpigeons were up and at it by then. I don’t know whether they are first, but they are the noisiest of the early risers, apart from the blackbirds, which I’ll forgive because everyone loves a blackbird. The woodies were racing up and down the roof and doing what they love to do best on the tiles directly above my head, and that’s how it is most days. It’s a less than evens chance that I’m going to get back to sleep and I am forced to invent arbitrary distractions to trick my brain into forgetting that I’m wide awake. The other thing they do, when their race is run or they have stopped their calamitous fucking, is scrape their beaks on the edge of the guttering. They might as well be running a nail along the wall behind the bed or sharpening a rusty axe on a damp flint.

What I came up with today was to try and remember all of the barbers and hairdressers where I have had my hair cut. The thing that got me started was a thought, which appeared from who knows where in that shit-accumulating head of mine, about Tatty ‘eads, where they were queuing out of the door on the one occasion (I suppose there may have been more) I visited in the mid 1990s with my friend Paul. I might come back to Tatty ‘eads, but I’ll begin with Makins, where my hair was first cut in a formal setting. This might be one of my earliest memories, but it could be a composite and if so, I beg your forgiveness.

I’m thinking it was a twice yearly thing (it’s twice monthly nowadays) but whatever the actual length of time between visits what I do recall with migrainous clarity is that we wore our hair long in the 70s. I say this as though I had a choice, but the fact is that my Mum, God love her, preferred my hair thick and wavy. Who knows if it retains those properties to this day – she would love it if it were so – but the evidence of one particularly embarrassing school photograph points to infrequent visits to Makins and like I say, that is how I remember it. So even though I was only ever subjected to a trim at the hands of Charlie or Leo Makin, I have an inkling that my sessions in the chair were tortuous. And torturous. Doubts have been expressed whenever I have described my nature as quiet and self-conscious, but that’s the truth of the matter. I doubt that either of the Makin brothers ever recognised my latent timidity, but if they did I’m prepared to believe –although this was the 1970s, so in a sense anything goes, or went – that they wouldn’t have done anything with that knowledge. They were two nice old chaps in white coats who rolled out their stock patter for whoever happened to be sitting in their red leather chairs. I never heard any of that something for the weekend stuff, which was presumably reserved for the adults, but all of us were treated to the day off this, holiday that, oh what about the football, and village gossip. The latter was for my Mum, to whom they would address at least half of the conversation. All the better if they let me be completely and talked to Mum’s reflection while I floundered on the bench seat that was brought out, with pomp and ceremony, to humiliate those of us not yet big enough to sit unaided in the chairs. I drew some comfort by setting my imagination loose as to what exactly was a sterilising cupboard and what would happen if Charlie or Leo’s fingertips breached the surface of the cerulean gunk in which they stored steel combs and scissors. I haven’t seen a steel comb in years – weren’t they used as weapons by Teddy Boys? – but I suppose they’ll be making a comeback now that plastic is taboo.

Makins, or was it Makins Bros., stood amongst the row of shops that line one side of the far end of Duke Street, which reaches its conclusion at the Railway pub and the turn into the station car park in Formby, which is now a dormitory town for Liverpool, but was then a farming village dying a slow death as the conurbation breached West Lancashire’s defences. I imagine I pitched up on the back of Mum’s bike (the mode of travel of the day), with my brother pedalling alongside on the red Raleigh that would one day become mine, having enjoyed a diversion through the park. No matter our destination, we rarely arrived on time; or at least that is how it felt. I still have such feelings. Also, there was always a queue. This has remained constant with every iteration of the shop which was first Makins and has been a place where boys and men go to get their hair cut ever since. The last time I went it was run by two Turkish brothers who were not identical twins, despite the fact that they dressed and looked the same. The Duke Barbers had installed televisions above each chair – cue the sound of Charlie and Leo churning in their graves – where customers could enjoy either sports news or music videos. Conversation was thus restricted, for which this visiting punter was grateful, I suppose.

I wanted to say something about the queues because until recently I would not have thought about making an appointment. That is not how these things work, or worked. There was a period where it seemed to me that no matter what time of day I tried, there would never be a free chair. Calling in on the off chance rarely worked and when it did you would get the barber (there’s always one when there is more than one) you have been trying to avoid ever since he nicked your ear or left an inexplicable and unmissable tuft at the top of your barnet or – this happens, believe me – let you walk out with uneven sideburns. If it’s not that, it’s the apprentice or trainee or a ringer who has been trained in hairdressing but not barbering (my wife would not let a barber near her hair, so why should it be any different the other way around?) or perhaps it’s just someone who talks but doesn’t listen and asks you the same questions as last time when they’ve exhausted whatever happens to be their chosen subject. I gravitate towards barbers who remember your face if not your name and who can sometimes pick up the conversation which was parked at the end of your previous visit. Taylor’s on Surrey Street in Sheffield was like playing Russian roulette: a line of seven or eight chairs with as many for waiting punters and you would never have any idea – regardless of how much effort you put into the calculation – whose chair you were going to sit at. There was one particular member of staff – I won’t reveal her true name – which the most ardent atheist would pray to avoid. It was always ‘Where’s Angela?’ because she was late starting or not back from her break or lunch, or off sick (yey!) and if she was working and you fell into her clutches the first thing she would do is tell you how much she had drunk or how late she had been up the night before and how severe was her hangover. I accept that I have been under the care of many barbers who liked a drink and a smoke – if I put my mind to it I could create a colour palette for nicotine-stained fingers – but trembling digits and sweaty palms do not make for good scissorwork. A session with Angela was not for the fainthearted, but that’s the gamble you take getting your hair cut on a Saturday morning.

Oh yes: the queues. How is it that when you arrive before opening time, two or three smug beggars will beat you to the chairs? This was especially true at Duke Street, which now that I come to think of it was called The Duke Street Barbers in its heyday in the 80s and 90s when Dangerous Dave (no idea about the origin of the nickname) divided his time between the chair, the bookies and the alehouse on the corner (the latter I know about, because I was there) and don’t bother turning up on the days when a trip had been arranged to Aintree, Haydock, Chester or, best of all, Cheltenham, because Dave would be on the coach running a Best Tipster competition or flogging Spot the Balls or filling in betting slips that had been provided by the unofficial on-coach turf accountant (Barney the Book, who was an actual turf accountant, but I wonder about the legality of him practicing his business on the open road) so there would only be one barber working that day and the queue would be out of the door. The other barber was, for a glorious time, an ex-soap opera actor who had turned his back on celebrity for a life, which he preferred, cutting hair. And he was alright too, the ex-actor; he could cut hair, but he supported the wrong football team, or was that his TV alter ego? He was a shy lad, which worked fine for this shy lad who didn’t have much chat and who knew how to sit in uncomfortable silence while someone who had had a brush with fame let his scissors do the talking.

The thing about having to wait, before the smartphone changed all that, was the newspapers and magazines. Who is it decided that what men want is tabloids and magazines about cars and motor homes and why, when someone has the bright idea of adding a broadsheet to the mix, does it have to be the Telegraph or Times? Doesn’t everyone need a haircut, with one or two cultural exceptions, so why not give us Guardian or Morning Star readers something to get stuck into? And if it’s not newspapers, it’s video games – I kid you not – and bottles of beer while you wait. Jacks of London, Wimbledon branch, you are in my sights. The one place I enjoyed waiting was James’s in Braunton, which was one hell of a schlep from our village further up the North Devon coast, but which was owned and run – it still is, which is one of the things you’ve got to love about these places – by a music loving rockabilly who was fanatical about The Clash and early rock and roll. The music made the journey and the wait worthwhile, as did James’s stories about Joe Strummer’s crazy benevolence and the fact that, as I recall, he did a mean fade.

With Charlie and Leo Makin, it was a short back and sides or a trim or a combination of both. Sometimes you would get the cut you didn’t want which might lead to Dad asking ‘Christ, what does the other fella look like?’ or a look from Mum which said ‘My heart is broken, what did he do to your curls?’ It wasn’t until I left home that I realised other styles were available. Oh hang on, I’ve just remembered Revhairlations, the hairdressers (ground floor) and barbers (up a very narrow staircase) at the other end of Formby where the walls were lined with black and white photographs of mullets, perms, flattops, fringes, bobs and crop cuts: styles to which one might (one did not) aspire, but which one would not dare to request. In those days, your hair simply evolved: it was what it was, whatever that was. I had no expectations of barbers beyond their ability to keep my style in control or in check. Why would I, since I asked nothing of them except ‘a trim’. This changed after I left home, although it was five years before Paul lured me to Tatty ‘eads with the promise of a one pound crew cut.