The “haircut”

We are in Istanbul and I thought a haircut was a tad overdue so, having made a mate of the old guy my age in the barber shop at the bottom of the hundred and fourteen step descent from our hotel in Istanbul to the Bosphorus each morning (and back each afternoon) I decided to make an appointment for the following day to get a trim. Uncle was overjoyed at the prospect of turning a mateship into Turkish lira so we set up the deal, each with a fair share of expectation. When the next day arrived, bright and early at opening time I was there sitting in pride-of-place and Uncle was exercising the scissors ready for action. He didn’t need to seek instructions. After all he was my age so he understood what a real haircut was. None of this flash new-fangled notion of a number one, or number two, shaved up all sides with a cocky crest on top. No. Just getting the scissors to do the work retaining the existing shape but pulling the ends back into line. There is a large number of barbers world-wide on my “barred” list because their first inclination is to grab the clippers and ask half way through the first trench how much they should take off.

Uncle was very practised in his approach and, because he only had two words of English and I had only one word of Turkish (“G’neiden”) he dispensed with the usual chit-chat and useful instruction and elected to give me the super-dooper all-in, wedding-day makeover, no doubt because he thought he’d maximum his return on the job.

Firstly my eyebrows and moustache got a trim and then the sideburns and the sides, contoured to the ears and then the tiny electric razor to the neck – which I thought was pretty thorough but met with my approval. Uncle lent across and turned on the power to something which I assumed was a hair blower and he settled in to a comprehensive but sensitive tidying up of my haircut – just the way I like it. A scissor job tutto – no electrical appliances required. Things were going pretty much as expected and I was pretty happy with the job so far and I was generally soaking up (I suppose now-days it is “sucking up”) the very relaxing experience of getting everything tidy on the head. Then my life experiences changed in a flash and were taken to a brand-new level as Uncle whacked his finger in the jar that had been subject to being massaged by electric power and he commenced to coat each ear with a warm, pretty, bright red wax. The ears got a proper going-over, inside and out. Now, while the application stage was quite comfortable my mind was trying to work out where this was going to end. After all, what goes on, at some stage, must come off – along with everything that was stuck to the red Mickey Mouse ears that I had acquired.

Uncle gave everything time to set, laid two perfectly fresh cotton buds on the shelf near the wax container and then very expertly began to “nibble” the edges of the Mickey Mouse ears, working from the extremity inwards over the perimeter of each ear lobe. This was reasonably tolerable but I expected to get a bit more sensitive when he handled the rest. Now, although I was not used to getting parts of my body waxed, I had an anticipation that there was going to be a part where you need to grit your teeth, clench your fists, close your eyes and pray that the exercise didn’t take the pain threshold too far.

And then it came.

He’d done it before so he knew there was no polite way to bring this to a conclusion so he did the only sensible thing in the circumstance – he reduced the painful bit to a minimum by ripping the whole caboose off each ear in very quick succession. Then the masterstroke! While my mind was wondering what part the two fresh cotton buds were going to play in the whole ordeal my greatest fear was realised when Uncle whacked a finger full of wax up each nostril and implanted a cotton bud in each! NOW I knew I was in a place from which there was NO retreat! There were but TWO options:

1. Walk around for the rest of my life looking like a walrus
2. Suffer the inevitable torture of the sudden removal of the nostril stoppers!

Uncle left me to contemplate the merits of each while the lovely red stoppers set like concrete to the cotton buds and the associated internals of the nose.

He came to a conclusion a tad before me and began working the bits closest to him on the extremity of my nose and, when he considered that he’d done as much as he could he zapped each cotton bud in very close succession so as to give me no time to call a halt midstream. I made a very loud exclamation so that the Turks in the near vicinity would have learnt another bit of English vocabulary if they hadn’t learnt it already.

Now, having mostly recovered from the ordeal (three weeks later) I’d say that it is a useful exercise at least once in a lifetime. Not sure about advising whether or not to leave it to the seventies but one thing I am certain of is that I would recommend that it’s done under general anaesthetic. You might also discuss the scope of works prior to engagement, albeit even if there is a sizable language barrier.