What do you do when you realise that the man who is cutting your hair smells of alcohol? This very situation happened to me only this afternoon.
He greeted me into the (empty) barber's shop and ushered me into a seat in front of a mirror. He assured me that he recognised me despite my not having been at this particular barber's for about eleven months. I explained that I had been in Spain all that time and that maybe he was mistaken. He said he had a good memory and started telling me how I had had my hair cut last time.
"Short over the ears, right sir?"
Maybe he did remember me, I thought. I dismissed my skepticism and feared that I was being somehow superior in my refusal to believe that a barber would remember me eleven months after a half-hour haircut.
But this is nonsense. I don't believe anyone would remember me after that amount of time, regardless of their profession.
It was about halfway through the haircut when I caught a whiff of alcohol. At first I wondered if a tramp had come in from the street, such was the odour. That familiar vodka breath that always seems to find a place in the seat behind me on the bus.
Then I considered that it was aftershave, though I knew in my heart it wasn't.
I soon became consumed with terror. The conversation had faltered and trailed off long ago, and I could see the red-faced man now going about his business with the speed, confidence and panache that you would expect from anyone in his line of work. Except this man was very possibly drunk. For all I knew, he was seeing the electric razor with double vision and grim intent. The confidence he was showing could be the very same confidence one shows when stepping up to a pool table at eleven p.m. in a busy pub.
My panic would have been calmed if I could see what kind of a job he was doing. But I could not. My thick glasses were on the table in front of me.
At this point, there was nothing I could do. I wished I had smelled the alcohol before sitting down. I would have informed the man he was drunk and would have self-righteously strode out to find another place to get my trim. But it was too late. If I left now, I would risk not only incurring the drunkard's wrath, but also being left with my hair only half cut.
I sat there and prayed. I assumed as blank a face as possible. Eventually it was over; my hair was scattered on floor below me. As I fumbled my glasses back onto my face, the barber showed me the back of my head with the traditional two-handled mirror.
I breathed a sigh of relief. It was okay. He hadn't taken enough off, but that was better than what I was imagining.
"Want some mousse on that, sir?"
I was ready to agree to anything. He sprayed some mousse in my hair and styled it badly.
I reckon he must have only had a drink or two. He didn't do a bad job.
