Someone must be talking about me

Rites of passage are a golden thread woven into the fabric of life here: Circumcision, your first sexual experience (with a goat if you're a man, according to Ayla), national service, buying your first pair of Sultan's slippers, deciding never to match your suit trousers with the jacket again, being charmingly mugged, realizing that you can enjoy Efes, and when to decide that it's time to have all your extraneous facial hair removed. Or rather having your barber, who tries to persuade you he's Mexican when clearly not, decide for you.

I had spent a considerable amount of time building a relationship with my barber in Brighton. I had tried many, including the late Alice Cooper Psycho Barber on Bond Street (haircut 100p, thick hair 120p). When I first moved to Brighton, I went there to have my very long hair shaved off (in a perverse attempt to "fit in" at art school) with Andy Blake. Half way through cutting Andy's hair Cooper turned to me and said "If you think I'm going to cut that (my hair), you can fuck off." He died shortly after. In his shop there was a hand-drawn picture of a man with his throat cut, which said underneath in a very shaky script "We do not shave." Years later I noted that the man in the illustration looked exactly like Lee, right down to the teeth. It was uncanny

I settled upon Headmen on Powis Square. It was clear from the first visit I wasn't going anywhere nice for my holidays, I didn't have a job, and I didn't care how the Albion were doing. (That's a stupid question at the best of times. Shit is always the answer). The dialog entire was gradually reduced to "Scissor-cut back and sides, longer on the top, parting to the left, leave the sideburns, please." "£7 please", "Thanks. Here's a quid for you. See you in a few months. Goodbye." Easy.

Northern Englanders often lament the stoicism of southern small businesses proprietors; I celebrate it. I refer to a letter sent to me by James Smith who found himself behind former Eastenders actress Patsy Palmer in the queue at Tesco. He was enraged by her driveling with the checkout woman. It is bad form to engage in conversation when there are other queuers eager to go about their daily businessespecially when they are patiently waiting to buy sixteen cans of Stella Artois and eighty Lucky Strike at 10 am on a Sunday.

And I don't want to know who my neighbours are either. Getting to know them is bad luck. When, for instance, they come to the door at 1am in their pants, drunk, complaining about the noise. Well, he could have been drunk or may have had a stroke, it was hard to tell, but nevertheless it was rude.

I entered uncharted territory once more when I went to a new barber for the first time the other day. The shop was unchanged since the 60s, like the Red Crescent clinic where I had my blood extracted. And it smelled like Old Spice, like the Red Crescent clinic where I had my blood extracted.

Mid way through the cut he produced a cigarette lighter from his pocket and set my outer ear hair on fire. It bloody hurt. Then he set about my inner ear hair, my eyebrows and my nostrils. That bloody hurt too. By the time the cutthroat razor came out I thought I was sausages.

Except for the Philip Schofield circa 1992 flick he quiffed up (which smoothed down into my regular Reich parting when I got out the door) it turned out to be a pretty good cut. He claimed he cut the late British Consul's hair before he was blown up by a al Qaida. Maybe I'll let it grow long again.