I Drew This

I didn’t take a lunch break today, so finished up a little early and used a bit of time at the end of the day to go and have my hair cut.

I changed jobs a few weeks ago, so I’m on the other side of the city, which means the barbers’ shops in proximity to my place of employ are different. I tried a “new” place today.

And when I say new, I mean that this place has obviously been there since 1960, possibly earlier. This was a traditional barber shop, still with the original fit-out which would have looked so sleek and stylish way back when and actually looks quite stylish in a retro way by today’s standards, if a tad faded. It’s large and roomy, has a huge mirror and two chairs.

After I sat down, my suspicions on the age of the place were confirmed: there was a faded, picture with telltale fuzzy focus, of a fresh, young Italian man standing in front of a barber shop. This barber shop. With the same signage, the same fit out, the same man that was here putting a hand-towel around my neck. Seeing his young face in the the photo and his old face, decades later, sizing up my head, was one of those moments when you think “fuck, life goes so fast”. And then I noticed another 70s postcard that had boobs on it and kind of got distracted.

I’ve been choosing to go to older Italian barbers pretty much my whole life. One of my best friends in high school was italian and his dad, Joe, was a barber, so there was never any question that I’d go anywhere else, really. When I moved away, I sought other such barbers not only because they were inexpensive but because there was just something so reassuring, honest and unpretentious about them; and as one not inclined to pretentiousness, this appealed to me.

My most previous barber in Bank St was great. He was even called Joe, though a bit taller than my friend’s dad. But he did a good cut: consistent and efficient. He didn’t mess about and he always had the easy-listening AM station on the radio (which, I kid you not, seemed to play Sailing by Christopher Cross every time I went in for a cut). I’m quite convinced he never really remembered me from the previous time, always asking “Medium cut?” to which I’d always reply “Uh, quite short, actually”. He took 15 minutes, max to do a cut, starting with the clippers around the back and sides, scissors on the top, loosen the bib/shawl thing, clippers with no comb around the back of the neck, then he’d use the cutthroat razor around the sideburns, back of the neck and then a quick comb and sometimes a bit more snipping. Then, talc in the brush and a quick sweep around the collar, ears and forehead to remove any stray offcuts, and done, $16, see you in six weeks.

The guy I went to today had much the same procedure. But it wasn’t the efficient, no nonsense cut I’d become accustomed to. This guy seemed to think that use of the clippers was two-fold: firstly, to cut hair and secondly, where it missed cutting, to flatten the hair. I conclude this from how hard he was pressing with the damn thing. I would have thought the best way to get the cut shorter, would be to use a shorter comb but he seem to think my skull was somehow flexible enough to give him a bit of leeway if my hair wasn’t as short as he’d like. It was like he wasn’t so much trying to cut my hair as force the clippers into my brain through whatever crack in my scalp he may have been fortunate enough to find. I had visions of my head breaking like an easter egg and the clippers buzzing away as my chocolate brain oozed out over his leather chair.

By the time he got to the back of my neck, he’d had the damn things turned on so long, it was like being branded it was so hot. The end result isn’t too bad, but what an ordeal! My other guy is close enough to the railway station I think I’ll just have to keep going back there.

He’s $3 cheaper.

I get the Belair line train into the city most mornings. I met a work colleague at the station this morning and we got in the train together and were having a nice chat about work stuff; boring but interesting.

The Adelaide public transport system, the rail network in particular, has a bit of a reputation. Most of the rail cars are getting old, they run on diesel, the windows are made of some dual-layer Perspex material that ranges from translucent at best to almost opaque at worst, the trains NEVER run on time (at least not on the Belair line but I gather most other lines are the same).

I don’t know what the problem was this morning but we noticed that as we pulled out of the station and got up a bit of speed, the engines cut out and we rolled into the next station before the brakes went on, passengers got on, the engines were started again, we got up some speed and they cut out again. The fortunate thing is that the Belair line, being the only train line into the hills, runs downhill going into the city, so saving power for whatever reason is pretty easy when gravity can do most of the work.

Even when things levelled out after Mitcham, the driver was still turning off the engines after getting up to full speed and we rolled into pretty much every station. It certainly made chatting easier, as the lack of engine noise made for a very quiet ride. My colleague and I were having to keep it down a bit at times because there was just so little noise and we didn’t want to seem loud.

The funny thing, and perhaps the point of this post, was that after we rolled into Goodwood, and just before the driver fired up the engines again, he made the same announcement that every driver makes just before leaving Goodwood on this particular train.

“Express to Adelaide”

It was one of those occasions where the unwritten rule of keeping to yourself could be disregarded. For some reason, the train was only half-full and that remark brought guffaws of laughter from me and a few other passengers. A guy sitting near me pulled out his earphones and asked “What did he say?” and he laughed when I told him.

Oh, we pulled into an unusual platform too (not that platform 4 is different in any way but this train usually comes into platform 1) and, such is the opacity of the windows, that people lined up to get out the doors on the wrong side of the carriage.