The New Hair Cut

I usually exit the barbers sporting something in the style of the Crested Grebe which gives me an appearance of permanent surprise.

Today, however was different. There was no wait. There was a spare seat and a spare girl. She asked me what I wanted. I wasn’t sure, a trim ? And while this would have satisfied the average hair dresser it did not satisfy this girl. She asked some fairly searching questions about what I really wanted, off the ears, length, tapered or cut at the ‘beck’ ? The ‘beck’ being the give away. We were not talking regional UK here we were talking proper foreign - Middle Europe. A Middle European girl with a better command of English than the majority of English girls.

Oh what a delight it has been to encounter the offerings from what was once behind the iron curtain. No longer do we have to put up with the surly, spotty, charmless, inarticulate British serving girls, who wouldn’t know service if it smacked them on the derriere “Oy, yew !”. No, these wonderful Slavic girls are bright, keen, they look you in the eye, they show interest. The high cheek bones do it for me, they lend an air of enthusiastic friskiness, exotic and of course I can’t deny that they are very easy on the eye. The Sandwich Shop is now abuzz, as is the Flower Shop, MacKays and the Newsagents and of course the Barber Shop.

I asked her where she came from ? Slovakia. I told her that I wouldn’t let a plumber near my house any more if he had a vowel in his name and that painters and decorators have to be called something ‘ic’ or you’ve got the wrong man. It’s the best thing that has ever happened, since the Bangladeshis came over and opened an Indian. The Poles, the Slavs, the Czechs, the Hungarians, they’ve given the fat slob Brit so called ‘skilled workers’ a right kick up their builders’ arses. We won’t touch the Brits anymore. In recent works on the house it took a Polish plasterer to correct the mess made by his Brit equivalent and a Czech painter to cut in properly and save Dave’s mess. I am especially impressed by Hungarians after one who was employed as a security guard came to my rescue. I was presenting on a Saturday and facilities had forgotten to ready me a projector from the Univeristy store. Being Saturday the store was locked, the key holder away - don't ask. The Hungarian asked for half an hour to sort something out. Unable to get the key to open the store, he was athletic enough to be able to squeeze between a grill and a counter and effectively break in. Old British jobsworth would have been far too fat to accomplish this and would have told me that it was more than his life was worth – which I imagine would have been little enough – to have broken in to the store. I thanked the Hungarian for going the extra mile.

She grasped the scissors so that her hand was covering the handles and some of the blade. I had never seen this before. And she cut very quickly. We didn’t talk much. I let her get on with her work. She was concentrating. At the end she checked my side burns to ensure they were level. I have never had this before. The Socialist Republic may have been a brutal regime under which to live but they certainly trained their people well. I hope she was getting the right rate for the job but fear that she was not.

On a recent sea trip I came across some Polish waitresses who were working on the ship because their careers did not pay well enough in Poland. One, a librarian, told me they worked four months on two months off. The ship itself never stops running. And because she was from Poland where the cost of living is lower than the UK she was paid less than the English and French crew. It’s a scandal. I don’t suppose they charged her less on board for her food and sundries ? They do this in Birmingham at BMW and at A & P ship builders on the Tyne where the Poles get £5 less per hour than other labour and no contracts, so they can be laid off in an instant. Not that this stops them from coming. But of course as Middle Europe makes its way over here, so it creates shortages in the home countries. The other day the Mayor of Gdansk had to come over to Peterborough and urge the townspeople to return to build the stadium for Euro 2012. He didn’t get any takers, so quite what will happen I don’t know. It won’t affect England, of course, because they won’t qualify but the other countries might want to know where they are to play in Gdansk..

I imagined her name was Anya. She concentrated on the cutting and took a proper amount of time. Eventually she succumbed and just before it was over, asked me whether I had a holiday planned ? No, but she had been to Egypt. I imagine the holiday question from a hair dresser is the staple of Bratislava as much as it is here. She showed me the back of my head which I only ever get to see once every six months and I noted that she had cut the hair most neatly.

This was a new style for me. It tended towards something from the front cover of Soviet Worker circa 1965, minus the square jaw and muscles... At least I don’t look like a Crested Grebe, any more.

Duncan