How do you celebrate St George’s Day? Do you bake a Victoria sponge? Sing Jerusalem in the shower? I know, you do that every day anyway. Or do you hoist the St George’s Cross up your flagpole? This year, I had a celebratory haircut, in a Turkish-style barber shop. It was apt, seeing St George was born in Cappadocia.
I suppose I should be grateful I can still cultivate a full head of hair. My bank balance not stretching to a flying visit to Bodrum given the recent Reeves scalp we’ve all received – a cut the Comanches wouldn’t deliver – I thought I’d kill two seagulls with one stone: if I can’t go to Turkey, Turkey can come to me. We’re lucky in Brighton that way. Probably as authentic as a Chinese takeaway but it’ll do.
Trouble is, going to a ‘foreign’ barber is scary, although my experience only covers Poland and Ukraine. Typically, they’d be up a flight of stairs, or in some dingy basement where you couldn’t see in properly. Was it a man in a butcher’s apron or a woman with a platinum blond perm? In Kyiv, even before the war, you’d go into any barber shop and there’d be a photo of their boyfriend staring back at you from somewhere near the mirror – in military fatigues and the shortest possible cut. Were they looking at me or the love of their life as they waved the scissors around? God, I hope he hasn’t just ditched her. The scissors weren’t the main worry – I’d pray they didn’t start with the razor. Today we pray there aren’t any bombs.
That’s why, when living abroad, you find a girlfriend, and fast. Don’t waste time over your work contract or rental agreement – those sideburns are growing. Most men want a buzz cut, a crew cut, the Caesar, the undercut, the Michael Fabricant, the pompadour, the updo, the classic taper, the close crop, the temple fade, the comb back or the quiff. How on earth do you just get a trim if you don’t speak the lingo? Without a helping hand, I’d never have known that the magic word was чуть-чуть – this was when most Kyivans still spoke Russian. чуть-чуть means ‘just a little’. In Ukrainian, it’s трішки – trishky. Write it down. It still means you come out looking like a convict, but one released a few days ago at least.
So this dragon needed slaying. I pace up and down outside. Pull yourself together man. If St George could survive 3rd century Turkey – and I know what the English are like in Kalkan – surely I could get through 20 minutes on the chair. Turkish barbers aren’t exactly my aesthetic. I mean, the leather sofas; enough chrome to compete with a Harley Davison showroom; more mirrors than Primark; enough strip lighting to show up all your fillings. Do I trust my bonce to someone with this taste in décor?
Once I’m convinced there’s no queue, I push open the door. If I don’t get the first question right – what will it be? – it will all go downhill. Off go my glasses. On goes the giant napkin. Up goes the chair. He grabs my fringe. Will this much be okay? Normally the thicker the slice the better. Not here. But he asks how many inches? Inches? I’m blind as a bat but that’s lulled me into a sense of security. Snip snip snip. The scissors wave around like something from an Edgar Allan Poe story. But the radio is French and the conversation as smooth as I hope a resurfaced Carden Hill will be next year that I start nodding off. I can almost imagine the Mediterranean lapping at my feet. A bottle’s-worth of aftershave slapped on wakes me up, just in time for me to dodge a dollop of Keir Starmer hair gel.
He tells me he’s shaved 20 years off me. I don’t ask how old he thinks I am, but I get his drift. And I got my money’s worth with enough left over for a slap-up kebab. I’m released into the street ready for a crusade – what is happening to our rubbish collections? Why is my gas bill still so high Ed? St George was a Roman soldier and a Christian martyr. He never got to the UK. But with this close shave his descendants are keeping the flag flying.
Alistair McNair is Leader of the Conservatives on Brighton & Hove City Council.
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