Some years ago I reached the happy state where I regard a visit to the hairdresser as therepeutic, one of the few occasions where you can hand over control to someone else relatively free of risk. This was not always the case.
From as early as I can remember my hair was cut in a salon owned and run by Mr Bussey, not fair from where I lived in Knowle Park, Bristol. When I was deemed in need of a haircut my mother would give me ninepence (men paid one shilling and sixpence), and despatch me to Mr Bussey's, where I would stand or sit in a queue with several other unfortunates. My recollection is that this normally happened on rainy days, so I had to stand and wait in my wet raincoat. Eventually my turn would come. If I was lucky, my hair would be cut by Mr Phil, a young, friendly man who regarded his junior customers as members of the human race. If I was unlucky, I got Mr Bussey himself. He would cut my hair with the clippers iin 45 seconds without looking at my head once whilst he talked, either to Mr Phil or to one of the adult customers. Most of the cut hair dropped between my neck and my shirt, promising a very uncomfortable time until bedtime.
I put up with this until I left Bristol to go to university in Leicester, where my hair was cut by a Greek Cypriot chap who gave 10% discount to students.
After two years in Leicester (that's a story for another day) I got a job with Leo Computers in Hartree House in Bayswater, and then subsequently in Portland House in Victoria. Hartree House was in fact the top two floors of Whiteley's department store in Queensway, and Whiteley's had a gent's salon in the basement, so that was easy, particularly as I lived in Talbot Road, a couple of streets away.
Then I returned to Bristol. I discovered that many of my male colleagues used a rather more upmarket salon at the top of Park Street; they did a good job but I remember little about them. Then I moved to Suffolk and, again, found a men's hairdresser in the basement of a department store. It was the first time I felt that I was a client rather than a customer - relationships were important.
My next move was to Chorleywood and my job was London-based. Having enjoyed a significant increase in income over the preceding few years I decided that I would raise my game, and started using the Vidal Sassoon salon in Brook Street, which I continued to patronise for a number of years. At first my hair was cut by a big West Indian guy called Thurston; we got to know each other well and often talked about our experiences and ambitions. I encouraged him to apply for a vacancy in the Vidal Sassoon salon in New York and, to his delight, he was successful. His successor was a tall, auburn-haired Swedish girl called Sabina Johanssen, who cut my hair for almost ten years until, bizarrely, she married a guy who, I think, sold day-old chicks to chicken farmers. Then Emma cut my hair for a few occcasions.
During the time I patronised Vidal Sassoon I moved job, and house, several times, and by now was living in Oxfordshire. I decided that paying for a trip to London for a haircut was an extravagance I could do without. I asked a guy I knew, who always looked well turned out, for the name of his hairdresser. He told my it was Segais, in Wantage. This was in 2003. I'm still a client.
