Memories Of Village Haircuts

A Memory of Sherington.

Just before the 1960’s transformed our innocent lives, all us village boys had a limited choice of tonsorial art; indeed you could count the number of available haircuts (styles wasn’t a word used for men or boys) on the fingers of one hand… Short Back & Sides, Square Neck, Feather Neck & Crew Cut.

Short Back & Sides; the standard cut for 90% of the male population and had been forever as far as I could tell. It left only the crown hair… to be individually determined e.g. long - medium – short. And for the MEN Brylcream was a must to spruce them up.

Square Neck and Feather Neck where pretty much the same thing, with the finish at the nape of the neck being either squared across with the clippers or feathered. The Square Neck was a Teddy Boy cut… Elvis was the role model, so the top was usually long and quiffed. With both these styles the biggest difference from the SB&S was the tight hairline around your ears.

Crew cuts were about but were really a ‘Yankee’ thing and were few and far between in Sherington. The only bloke in the village with one was Slick Slater.

For me as a boy and young teenager hair cutting had two crucial matters associated with it and in truth both were out of my control… who was going to do it and what was it going to look like.

Dad was the village expert in trimming dogs (his normal occupation was a Butcher). He had a set of clippers and on a Sunday various mutts would arrive for a trim… some from as far a field as North Crawley and Newport Pagnell. The dogs and Dad would disappear into the tin shed. It was now that I learnt that the expression ‘y’bu**er’ should be used after such doggie commands as ‘sit still’ and ‘get up’… and that they had to be growled deeply and slowly rather than said, otherwise the dog would obviously not understand.

Boys? Dogs? What’s the difference? Clippers cut hair on whatever creature they were applied to.

All I will say is that you do not need to experience the feel of hand clippers on your hair to empathise with the sitter; just compare cutting paper with sharp scissors and tearing it.
Dad knew all about what shape a dog’s coat should be. Boys were different so he adapted and adopted the pudding basin technique e.g. putting a ceramic bowl on my head as a guideline. All showing below was clipped off as close as possible and the bowl was removed… and all the hair above the basin line was now shortened with various utensils, including scissors, razor combs and the clippers. All this was undertaken using the same sit still command… I really felt like a dog. What did it look like? Well Dad admitted I never turned out as good as a dog. So whilst I already felt like a dog, I probably looked worse than one.
Blood, sweat and tears finally persuaded Mum to relieve Dad of this duty. The blood and tears were mine; the sweat was Dad’s.

I think that having Dad to introduce me to the pleasures of the barber’s art was just a cunning ruse. In normal circumstances the thought of Uncle Ben (the village carpenter and handyman) cutting my hair would have been bad enough… but given a choice of Dad or an alternative… the alternative had to be better, and Uncle Ben did have electric clippers.

Uncle Ben cut hair on a regular basis, he was a bachelor and I guess this was his opportunity to chat whilst making a few bob on the side. He held court in the kitchen of his cottage and you needed an appointment. That is to say Mum would have made arrangements… then at the last minute, to avoid excuses, she gave me a shilling and sent me off with instructions to go strait to Uncle Ben’s.

Uncle Ben had all the gear… a big chair with a boy box to raise you up to men’s height… a mirrors to look at yourself whilst he cut away. Waiting chairs, magazines or comics, Brylcream and ‘Tonic” which smelled of ladies perfume and which was only applied to men upon request.

Uncle Ben would say ‘ up y’get air’Alan’ ‘ ow d’ y’u want it?’ … I would pause and perform some badly acted thought… ‘ A square neck please Uncle Ben ’.
Uncle Ben now avoided eye contact and his response would be
‘ r y’u sure y’u Mum ses that’s all right air’Alan ?‘. ‘ Yep ’ I repled, with fingers crossed.

And so the cutting and shaping and questioning about what I was up too would commence… No basin… No razor comb, just the buzz of the electric clippers and the snipping of sharp scissors. I swear to this day you could feel the cold scissors cutting the square across the nape of your neck. Without any blood, sweat or tears the job was done. I would walk home with the wind whistling around my newly exposed ears feeling like a rock star.

What did it look like when I put a mirror behind my head? (Uncle Ben had not been that silly). I looked like a boy with a Short Back & Sides; in fact exactly what Mum had arranged with him and I fell for it every time.

Like all the other boys we knew Uncle Ben was better than our Dad and each time we went to Uncle Ben’s he convinced us we would get the cut we wanted.

Eventually we grew up enough to get our hair styled in Newport Pagnell, just in time for the Beatles to hit the scene – and then we all wanted mop-top haircuts, just like the Fab Four.

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