Haircuts. They are on my mind a lot recently. As my hair sprouts from my head in all directions except down, I resemble my father more and more. My hair has gone wild. It is in radical need of severe pruning. The wild haired look isn’t for me. I never signed up to look like Tony Blair.
A visit to the barber was always a treat. Even the cheapest haircut I ever paid for (60p, York, 1979) had inspired self-confidence. To walk out taller than I walked in – even though the barber had shorn off at least half an inch of height. I used to visit every six weeks. And in all the years of barbering, I have assembled several places to which I am loyal, plus a few others where the experience has been fantastic, even if only a one off: a little back street barbers in Portugal, another in Fetiyeh, Southern Turkey.
There is an old joke. And when I say old, I mean C4th Greece old. A man goes in to the barber’s:
How would you like your hair cut, sir?
In silence
The Philogelos (Laughter lover)
I am that man. But I have only ever found one barber in this country who does this unbidden. His name is Don. I know this because it said on his card: Don
Don has long since retired, and my days as a thrusty corporate executive wannabee are behind me, so staying tonsorially immaculate isn’t the necessity it once was. But Don will always be my ideal barber.
His shop was set up in the back of what was, in the 1990s, the Covent Garden flagship store of the British fashion label Hackett. Hackett suited my style back then and I discovered Don’s lair one lunchtime trip. He had a big leather journal in which he wrote down all his bookings and a set of the most chrome-and-black-leather barber chairs you ever clapped eyes on. If the Kray brothers had come to Don for a haircut, you wouldn’t be at all surprised. It was a Guv’nor sort of place. The floor was black and white chequered and the sinks, generously proportioned white porcelain – immaculately clean. Don had the badger bristle shaving brush, some wonderful ointments and shaving creams and a cut throat razor and strap. Like I say, they may have put the equipment to different use, but Ronnie and Reggie would have felt right at home here.
Don had one magic trick. He was an ex-wrestler and his fists were like hams. He had the strongest fingers on the planet and he knew how to use them. When Don was finished with the scissors – he eschewed electric clippers (he had a manual set which he wielded expertly when necessary) – he would ask if you wanted some ‘friction’. Friction came in two varieties: Hackett’s Eau de Portugal with or without oil. The scent was citrus and neroli. It was heaven. Allied to Don’s iron fingers pummelling it into my scalp, it was thirty seconds of sublimity. A combination of extreme, masochistic head massage and floating in a citrussy cloud. The combination simultaneously induced trance and made you feel wholly energised.
Don knew he was good. He was a bit scowly. Curmudgeonly. But he was good at barbering. There was no inane chit-chat. No “d’you see the game last night?”. There was only cutting hair and rubbing your head until it nearly came off in his hands. And, on very special occasions, a close shave – although in this endeavour, I reserve the top spot for Turkish barbers who do easily the best job. But I didn’t discover them until later.
Don wore the old traditional white barber’s coat – like a mini skirt version of the traditional doctor’s coat. A comb in the top breast pocket in place of a pen; always starched and clean. Black trousers. Polished black Oxford shoes. He was heavily built, as becomes an ex-wrestler, but he moved quickly. He had an old silver cash register, inlaid with decorative patterns and as he rung up the sale, I handed him the cash and a fiver for himself.
“Thank you, sir”, he said. There was no incline of the head, as there often is with more servile barbers. He felt this was his due. Here was a man who looked you square in the eye – an exchange of equals. “When shall I put you in for next time?” I consulted my diary and we settled on a date six weeks hence. That was all the exchange we needed. Normally there was another gentleman waiting for his attentions, so the gaze would shift and I was old news. Until next time.
Don the Bastard, I called him. I never told anyone else about my find because, frankly, I wanted to keep him and his perfect cutting shop to myself. The only conversation we ever had was when he educated me about proper barbering. I once expressed surprise that he didn’t cut my hair wet. (He cut it first and then shampooed it and washed it.) Don looked angrily into the mirror and fixed my gaze. He stopped cutting.
Cutting hair when wet shows they don’t know what they’re doing. Like if they can’t use these (he motioned towards the manual clippers). Proper barbering.
Don the Bastard
And that was it. End of conversation. Thank God. No opining on the entire art of hairdressing. No compulsion to converse. No offer of coffee. Just the quiet snip of scissors and the diligent efficiency of Don’s concentration. Just a transaction and a service. A little like the barber in the Queens Hotel at Leeds station who trimmed the hair of my grandfather every morning at the same time before he went into work. The transaction was so terse and so efficient, my grandfather kept the keys in the ignition and the engine of his car idling whilst he went into the hotel. The car never got so much as scratched, let alone stolen. I wonder if that barber was related to Don.
One day I turned up and walked into Hackett for my appointment. But Don had gone. I suspect he had fallen out with the management. It sounded like he was never happy with the arrangement and he was never complimentary about the staff there. Now what would I do?
All barbers seem to think they are good. They aren’t. I went searching. In London I enjoyed G.F Trumper’s in Curzon Street for a while. Traditional barber shop with private wooden cubicles and a nice line in unctions and ointments. In Brighton there are three tribes of barber. The traditional, the hipster and the Turkish. (There is a fourth, as there is in all cities – the really bad barbers who think they are good but take no pride in their work and are the barbering equivalent of a greasy spoon cafe.) There is one barber in Brighton who thinks he is a cut above all the rest – he has a very stylish place and charges a fortune, but he is not as good as his PR. I tried him several times, but the end product didn’t match the price or the showing off talk.
The hipsters are tattooed to their eyebrows and conversation is shouted over the thrash metal playing from opening to closing. I don’t go there. Instead, I opt for Turkish barbers. Don’t go to one if you want a trim. Go to one if you want a proper haircut. Whatever you ask for, you will end up with a short back and sides. They are not sensitive types – aspirant novelists or would be tech wizards, as the hipsters are – and although they are loquacious, the words are always aimed at their fellow barbers. A conversation in Turkish sounds like two people shouting at one another, but at least I can zone out in the chair.
Brighton Hipster 
Traditional gentlemen’s 
Turkish
Turkish barbers win out because of two things they do that no-one else does. Firstly, they de-hair your ears using a flame which they deftly flick into your ear to singe the hairs off. This is an art and I enjoy the frisson of danger that they might scald you to death or set fire to your brain. I stop going when they try and palm me off on an apprentice – which my local one did repeatedly until I had a word. I don’t want people learning on my scalp or making what’s left of my hair into an inferno. Learn on the boss if you need to learn. I pay money.
Turkish street barbering 
Singeing the hairs
Secondly, when you have a wet shave, it’s really, really close. Not only that. but they swathe your face in scalding hot towels before and after – the first time to soften the beard, the second to open the pores. They massage your cheeks and neck and even your arms. I don’t know why they massage your arms, but I am not complaining. Finally, they splash your recently de-hursuited face with after shave. It invigorates your face and sends you out in to the world feeling sharp as a tack. And they are cheap. There are no aires and graces and pretensions as there are with my man who believes his own PR. A Turk cuts you and that’s it. No endless fussing with the scissors to trim away barely visible ends of individual hairs; no explaining how they are feathering or lightening or thinning out to re-balance your hair (hair dressing is like car mechanicing: don’t tell me what you’ve done, just mend the car). No vapid, mirror-enabled chit-chat which, when it starts, seems to put a stop to the hair cutting as they gaze in the mirror and wax lyrical about their life – a life which I am genuinely not interested in. Maybe hairdressers cannot talk and cut hair at the same time? It certainly seems so.
There is another advantage to the Turkish barber and it is a killer. When lockdown comes, hair grows. And no one really knows when we will be able to visit the barber again. So when you get a haircut, get a through one. Don’t take off a quarter of an inch. Don’t just have a trim. If the worst happens, you’ll end up looking like Tony Blair. It’s not a good look. If you’ve made a reputation by having long hair or even have a job where it goes with the territory, fine. But the chances are if you have, you have a secret tunnel to your personal hair stylist. For the rest of us, get down to your local Turkish and get your head close cropped. God knows when we’ll be allowed out again.