Another haircut

Once upon a time I used to worry about my haircut. I would travel miles to go to someone I trusted and who did more or less as I asked. Everyone knows that haircutters are a law unto themselves. You ask for something and they do exactly what they want following the natural growth of your hair and their own particular fancy.

So I needed a haircut and I'm new to La Unión. I wandered the streets looking for a hairdresser. There are still plenty of barbers in Spain but hairdressers are more common. Hairdressers are unisex but, presumably as women spend more money on trying to look nice than men, there are plenty that call themselves something like beauty centres where they do nails, remove body hair and indulge in other strange rituals. I passed a couple of those but I baulked at going in. I'm old, I'm set in my ways, I needed something just a tad more virile.

There was a Moroccan barber. Well Arab speaking anyway because there was Arabic script above the door. Manly or what?

Nowadays I don't worry about haircuts. I've had some terrible ones but it doesn't much matter. In a couple of days the strange image in the mirror becomes usual and a couple of weeks later everything is back to normal.

This time though, as he began to cut I was genuinely fearful. He wielded his electric clippers like a six shooter and cut a huge swathe of hair from the side of my head. Demi Moore in GI Jane sprang to mind. He moved to the back and this time my thoughts turned to those neat lines of the tennis courts at Wimbledon. He clippered away for ages. Like every Moroccan I've ever met this man spoke a couple of versions of Arabic and French. He also spoke a version of English which left me totally nonplussed at times. He told me about snakes, his law degree and studying nursing here in Spain. Not a mention of ever having done a hair cutting course. I now had close cropped sides and a big unruly mop of hair on top. He faffed around with brushes, sprayed me with a fine mist of water several times and razored some of the lines sharp. He even shaved hairs from my ears (yuk!) but not a sign of scissors. I scanned his tray of implements - no scissors. Maybe Moroccan haircutters don't use scissors. If it were left like this it would take more than a couple of weeks to repair the damage. Fortunately there were scissors they just weren't in view and finally he did a meticulous job. It's not a great haircut but I've had much, much worse.

"How much is that?" I asked. "Five euros," he replied.

I may well go back.