That was rather unsettling. Went for a haircut to the cheap place down the road. The only barber was a woman: an extraordinarily pretty Moroccan (as it turned out). I've not had my hair cut by a woman in at least a decade. The last time it was a careworn Albanian, down in West Hampstead's Little Illyria (there really is such a place - our local Albania Town). "All Albanian man is shits," she hissed in my ear, at one point.
Anyway, I was a little thrown by the beauty of my barber (a Berber barber? Possibly...). I'd forgotten what an intimate act it all is, the caressing and stroking of the head... And then I remembered that just the other day a Facebook friend had posted that her hairdressing husband had to put up with people who would 'fiddle under the smock', and so I became worried that my Berber barber might suspect me of something similar, as I supposed that her beauty might well attract the wrong sort of customer. So I kept my hands rigidly on the chair arms (though still beneath the smock).
And then I felt a twitch of heyfever. I feared a messy sneeze. I had no hanky. Could I ask her for a tissue? It would be fine if I actually sneezed. But what if the urge passed? And I drew the tissue beaneath the smock, to put it in my pocket ...
Anyway, it made for a very stressful twenty minutes. Half way through a Silver Fox character came in, bearing a bunch of flowers. A deep even tan, giving him the colouring of the interior of a 1970s luxury car. Suggestion of work done – at the least some botox round the eye; possibly a full lift.
Another barber had appeared, ready to work, but the Silver Fox waved him away, and asked my Berber barber how long she'd be. I think the flowers were for her.
'Soon,' she said, ‘soon,’ and I felt her hurry, rather, over my sideburns.
When I stood up after the haircut, the smock having been whipped away, I saw that the heat and the stress had resulted in the front of my shirt being sodden.
'It's, er, sweat,' I said, though it would have been better to remain silent. I gave her a very generous tip. Which again now seems like a mistake.
A Berber barber that's all, folks!