SE10 Greenwich
Getting a haircut at Ronniesby Mike Gardom |
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We were a big family, and my mum used to try and save a bit of money by cutting our hair herself in the kitchen, but after one particularly bad pudding bowl job she decided it was a false economy. So we were packed off across Greenwich Park to get our hair cut at Ronnies, the gentlemen's hairdresser near the old fruit and veg market in Greenwich. |
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Greenwich was a bit run down in the 1970s, certainly a far cry from its chic look of today, and Ronnies was pretty much par for the course. A row of vinyl covered chairs against the back wall, a selection of ancient magazines, a strange assortment of things that you could buy (styp pens featured largely, I remember). And then there was the hairdresser himself, presumably Ronnie, although I always secretly hoped that one of the Two Ronnies might turn out to be the owner and turn up one day. Ron was a large man with heavy features and dark hair slicked straight back in a Kray-brothers look and to me he looked very forbidding. He wore a dark red polyester tunic over his shirt, and kept his conversation to a minimum. |
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I always dreaded my turn coming round. First of all the barber's chair seemed to take off completely in order to jack up high enough for Ron to work on me. Then there was the gruff question, "What do you want?" The most obvious answer was "A haircut", but I knew (after the first time) that this was not in itself an acceptable reply. The more correct answer, "A haircut that people won't laugh and point at in the street, unlike the one I got from mum last month" felt disloyal. The totally honest answer "To escape from this chair alive and with both ears" seemed just plain rude, and would in any case alert him to any likely escape plans. In the end I squeaked, "Just a bit of a tidy up, please", and he grunted and got to work. Ron worked slowly, and from time to time would turn away from the barber's chair and go over the window and take a drag on the Senior Service cigaratte that was burning in the ashtray there. He would look up and down the road from his window, then cough and put the fag back in the ashtray and decide that there was nothing for it, he'd have to cut a bit more hair that day, and come back. |
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The worst bit was when he turned on the electric clippers to do the hair at the back of the head. I was naturally very ticklish, and the vibration of the clippers on my skin made me giggle, causing Ronnie to hold my head in one hand like a large melon as he tried to keep a straight line. |
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The ordeal seemed to go on forever, but in fact the entire cut only took about ten minutes. At the end he would bring out the small mirror to show me the back of my own head (I don't know why, possibly just to show that he had not carved his initials on it) and then the chair would whoosh down until it was safe to jump to the floor, pay him with the sweat-damp pound notes that I had kept clenched in my hand all the way through, and escape to the safety of the sweetshop across the road for quarter of stick sweets from one of the large plastic jars in the window. |
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