Welcome back my friends to the song that never ends........(er well obviously one day it will but....)
Back on line at last. The little beavers that constitute the 'coal-facers' of BT have finally burrowed deep enough under the subsoil of central Manchester to fix what was unfixed by that most elemental of elements - fire. Strangely my land line was fine. Big deal. Youngest suffered even more. He lives just over a mile away and both his land line and broadband were bolloxed. Someone else I know on BT who lives half a mile from me had no problem with either land line or broadband. Both provided by BT. The Byzantine shenanigans involved in network routing has always left me dazed and confused. I wouldn't dream of even attempting to understand it at my advanced age.Speaking of advanced age, my colleague and I have established a monthly dinner-time trip to a local Gent's Barbers. Although the only 'barber' in the place is female, she is a man's female. Doesn't constantly waffle on about nothing in particular. Cuts your hair with the minimum amount of fuss, time and cost. 4 years or so we've been regulars.
So, come Wednesday, resembling an aged chorus line from a local Rep's over-50s presentation of 'Hair' (without the gratuitous nudity obviously), we presented ourselves and our £3.50s at the threshold of Maria's.
But, it wasn't Maria. A young lad was being attended to with the gusto of Edward Scissorhands as his twitching mother vacillated between distress for her offspring's scalp and the need to make small talk. The scalper was a jet-black haired, mascarared, push-up bra'd, too-tight-jeaned-for-her-age scarecrow.
Maria is finding her success hard to deal with as a one-man-show and she felt she needed to share the burden. Edward Scissorhands was the solution. All the while she snipped and snapped, she never stopped talking. Ex-boyfriends, husbands, places she'd worked, her PMT, how she was always being asked out by her clients. She never drew breath. Death, life, mucus and jizz. Bargains, rip-offs, holidays and divorces. It didn't bode well.
So, seven hours later, when she had finally finished with the 6 year old, I approached the chair. The first two minutes went well. I began to relax. Then:
"Is that your son?" My head a blur of snipping, snapping steel.
"Sorry?"
"Is that your son?" Gesturing at D my colleague. My colleague who is, incidentally, a mere 10 years younger than I.
"You what??????"
Cue much raucous laughter from 'my son', red-faces from the scalper and a supremely pissed-off occupiedcountry.
After some, frankly embarrassing, back-tracking, she blundered on:
"I have to dye my hair every couple of weeks because I'm not really this colour."
Fuck me you're kidding aren't you? I mean you can't be a day over 52 and here you are in your obsidian-headed splendour. She carried on...
"In fact, if I didn't dye it you'd see that I'd probably be almost as grey as you!!"
Is this 'You've been framed?'
Once again deep apologies. "Oh I'm sorry I didn't mean it to come out like that, I mean, err....at least you've got a full head of hair."
Caught off guard by this apparent compliment (I get so few), I confessed to a small bald spot round my crown.
She considered this for a moment. The scissors stopped. She stared.
"Yeah you're right" she said, "you have got a bit of a 'CHIMP'S ARSE' haven't you?"
What seemed like two hours later, when she'd stopped pissing around with my head (internally and externally), I paid up.
"Thank's love, you've really boosted my confidence."
It was D's turn next so I nipped along to the Butty (sandwich) shop next door. Within 2 minutes I was back with my tuna and cucumber creation.
"........so I bought myself a 'Rampant Rabbit'."
"A what......?"
"A 'Rampant Rabbit' love. It's a vibrator."
A brief pause ensued. I eyed my tuna and cucumber creation. How the hell had they got on to this subject after 2 minutes? D has led a sheltered life and has ,evidently, never had the need for a 'rampant rabbit'. I caught his eye in the mirror as his face turned the same colour as his neck. Predictably Edward Scissorhands observed:
"Fuck me, his face has turned the same colour as his neck."
Later we discussed the rota that was pinned to the wall. Obsidian-head has one day a week off. We'll be going on Thursdays in future.
We'll attend counselling sessions on Wednesdays.
Today, on the Jeremy Vine show, a radical explained why no muslim should ever let the police know that he or she suspected, or even knew, that a fellow muslim was guilty of terrorism.
"Allah says that no true believer can talk to 'the enemy' (ie. us secular, christian, jewish, jedi, branch-davidian, Blake's Seveners). "
He refused to condemn the Madrid bombings. He refused to accept the culpability of his own 'true believers'. He constantly referred to the past - and had a point. But when he was presented with a scenario of a muslim suicide-bomber killing 100s of people on a train in Spain - including his own brother - and asked would he tell the police who the bomber was if he knew, he said no.
He said no.
Once again a 'Big-Man-Who-Lives-In-The-Sky', a man who died centuries ago, was presented as justification for this. At the same time the tosser explained that he was a muslim and, naturally, didn't believe in democracy. He also felt that it was OK to live as though under Sharia Law in the UK, regardless of the actual laws of the country until these sceptered isles become a Muslim dependancy. Later he pontificated on the inability of the decadent to live purely.
I truly despair.
I thought that, by now, we would've become completely rational human beings. I mean, it IS the 21st century!
