Block Copy Coders

Today I am writing in praise of our local Men’s barber who has sold me a £4 haircut. The motivation’s to buy a £4 hair cut are in part curiosity to see what you’d get the equivalent of less than 2 pints of Stella and also a suspicion that it’d probably be quick.

You can’t be spending all day on a haircut that cheap, you need to do a haircut every 45 mins just make minimum wage, adding in overheads and so on you’re going to have to be doing at least a haircut every half hour to break even.

And that suits me.

Quickness is a big attraction when it comes to getting my hair done. I’ve had some very nice cuts by some very la-di-dah (and expensive) tonsorial artists and they’ve all been uniformly horrible experiences. Lots of waiting despite turning up at exactly my appointment time, a load of pointless chats about “going on my holidays” and tortured conversations actually trying to explain what I do for a living usually ending in requests to get them some free games.

My last haircut, though one of the nicest I’ve ever had was also possibly the worst experience I’ve had in a hairdressing salon.

A male hairdresser who was asking about taste in music, proclaimed him and his girlfriend’s utter devotion and love of “indie music” (despite knocking the wrong side of 40) and then asked me if I liked Keane. I don’t and said I didn’t but that didn’t stop him putting some on the stereo just to make sure. Coldplay came on next.

It was horrid. Anyway.

£4 chap was completely ace. 12 mins from start to finish, he didn’t talk to me once during the cut and was fine with me reading The Sun while he chopped away. I did feel a straining on his part not to pipe up when I opened to page 3 but he did the right thing and kept schtum.

And the cuts not bad, a little bit 30’s Arsenal Player but a big step up from the Doc Emmet Brown grey fro I’ve been sporting of late. Went down well with the mrs too who now keeps calling me “lovely”. I’ve added that to my CV.

So I salute you the utilitarian named Men’s Barber Shop est 1962 (instead of red and white it should really have been done out in the blue and white of the Tescos’s value branding) of Bitterne Triangle and recommend anyone in the area who likes their hair being done in the style known as a short back and sides to go and get one.

Hello stranger, it’s been a while.

First I’d like to apologise for all of the blog entries I haven’t been arsed to write. It’s a bit of a shame as they’re most certainly some of the finest journal entries ever written and it’s you who’s missed out.

Never mind. Here’s a crappy story about a recent visit to the Isle of Wight instead.

Our Trip to the Isle Of Wight

Despite it being just on the doorstep of where I live for nearly 10 years now I’ve been to the IoW just once (a fleeting visit to a software developer to see if we could work together. It only took 30 mins to work out we couldn’t and it was back onto the hovercraft).

So off we went for a seven and a half walk across the downs from Ventnor up to Shanklin and back again and this is the exciting story.

It starts in the men’s loos

First I should explain in the men’s loos I don’t generally like to use the urinal. Mostly it’s because the majority of the jeans I own have button flies. There’s nothing worse than doing your business at a urinal and then spending too much time fiddling about doing your button flies up. The other urinal users don’t have a clue your not using a zip and it’s disconcerting for them to see a grown man fiddling with his groin in a public place.

Given that I was busting for wee when we got to Ventnor and there was a public convenience next to the car park in I popped in, spurned the trough like urinal and headed for the only cubicle in the place. Where I saw this:

Which made me laugh. The astute reader is probably aware that as well as laughing I’d got the camera out. Which in turn allowed to me get a picture of the inside of cubicle:

Which made me laugh some more. Now I know it’s only a can in the pan but it didn’t seem exactly right to do my business over it. I don’t know why. I like Stella I suppose and it just seemed disrespectful.

So I walk out of the cubicle laughing holding a whacking great SLR camera and in the meantime someone else has come in and is looking at me from the urinal look I’m George Michael. The only thing to do is get my weeing done and skedaddle as quickly as possible. Which I do, finishing before the other guy and then start to do up the button fly on jeans. I’m a bit hassled and embarrassed by the this point and doing a very bad job. It just looks like a lot of inappropriate fiddling. I look over miming a sort of shoulder shrugging eye rolling action that supposed to convey, well, “D’oh!” really.

He looks horrified, really properly horrified, zips up v quickly and scarpers out with washing his hands. Dirty sod. I was my hands and then tell Suze. She laughs a lot.

As for the rest of they day? Very nice really if not more than a bit knackering. They’re called downs but there’s just as many ups. Other highlights were seeing the below fifty year old men worryingly wearing Suga Babes t-shirts which I swear I heard mutter “Wanna come down to the beach” to some passing teenagers. Shudder.

We spent some time looking at Groynes, no not more toilet adventures but that’s what these concrete sea defences that look a little like giant’s jacks are called.

And also a horse that looked gay. I want to make it clear I’m not anti-homesexualist in any way but the dainty upheld front hoof looked rather natty and a tad effete.

After all of that walking my brain wasn’t working properly and the journey back to Ryde involved randomly selecting roads that looked northish and getting more and more concerned as they got narrower and narrower. It all worked out in the end though and we slept the sleep of just that night.