Back in Blighty.

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In the middle of December I flew over to England for a cuppla weeks to indulge myself in a good old family christmas, (I know hard to believe but the accent gives me away every time).

A time in which I stayed with Mum & Dad, hung with Nan & Sharon, caught up with friends that I hadn't seen for years and revisited our old local haunts.


It was lovely to see everyone in the lead up to Christmas, I had the good fortune of Mum bringing Christmas Day lunch for all of the family around a few days early, seeing as I had to be at the Fire hall (how very Canadian of me !) over the Chrissy period. Nan and Mums Christmas lunches are the best.

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Photos

Phil and Owen.
Owen & Phil reciting a few "do you remember when" stories.

Dad and I
This is the day that Dad and I had lunch at my old local chinease & spent the rest of the day walking around Greenwich park, the Tea clipper Cutty sark & just ambled along the Thames with both us chatting & pointing out the things that have changed, old busy commercial wharves which once provided the majority of locals with work which are now million $ dockside apartments or in various states of decayed suspended animation.

Mum & Dad
Dinner in London's finest curry house.

Traffalgar Square.
Every year since the end of the Second World War the people of Norway have presented England with a Christmas Tree, to say thank you for our assistance during those times. Now this is a prime example of how things change, I remember Mum taking me up to see the Oxford Street Christmas lights & to Trafalgar square to see the tree and I recall standing at the base & looking up thinking to myself that this must be the biggest tree in the whole wide world

Matthew & his careers.....Doug & Jean.
Sometimes life can be so cruel.

Serges little joke..
It was indeed a rare moment I grant you but strangely enough I was feeling a little bit on the quiet side as I was walking along Dartford high Street past the barbers and I thought to myself; self, you need to get a haircut for Christmas, in I walk, looking to take a welcome break from the millions of people that are surrounding me on one of the last frenzied shopping days before the 25th & to take the oppertunity to exit the screaming melee and finally take the weight off my feet & relax in a comfy chair situated in amoungst the warm traditional confines that only a barbers shop can offer in times of pressed ganged retail carnage.
Being Christmas, there was a bit of a queue but that suited me because the previous evening I had joined Steve and Matt for a few (too many !) cleansing ales untill way past bed time, so I was content to sit in line and maintain/mask my own fragile existance, by zoning out and pretending to blankly read the paper untill it was my turn in the chair. I was hungover like the proverbial brown dog looking meekly at the floor, making minimal eye contact with anyone, when "Serge" the worlds most "flamboyant" barber waves & beckons me over to the chair & I'm attempting to send out subliminal messages, "please don't start a conversation" vibe to anyone who might be, shall we say, leaning against me, with their forearms against my back whilst continuing to run their fingers through my hair (for a little bit too long shall we say)making tsk-tsk-tsk noises about my split ends.
Barbers and Hairdressers must develop a sixth sense (other than the golden rules of never disscuss religion or polatics ), as to guaging weather their subject/prey are condusive to conversation (or in my case capable of conversation !) Serge decided that it was a negative on the latter and left me alone (both physically and mentally)which allowed me to pleasently drift off into the twylight zone.
If you cast yourself back to having a haircut,it's something that we have all done on a pretty regular basis for a number of years, so I think it would be fair to say that if your a guy having your regular short back & sides it's almost a routine, you know what to expect.....(or at least you think that you know what to expect)....
The hair is all done, Serge has done an absolutley bloody marvellous job and now he's brushing down the back of my neck (thankfully this occasion differed from last, in the small fact that he had actually had a brush in his hand this time) to remove all of the cut hair from the neck and shoulder area, yeah, this is familiar, now were almost done, next should be the neck line ( I wonder if I'll get the clippers or the cut throat razor, I hope that I get the razor coz it gives a closer cut) bearing in mind that I'm thinking all of this to myself whilst having spent the last 20 mins sitting in a state of near coma, relying on auto pilot to carry me through. Then Serge reaches for the shaving soap (or at least what I thought was the soap) and then I see out of the corner of my periferal vision he gets what appears to be a long cotton bud and puts on the soap, then runs it around my forehead hairline over a couple of hangers on from my ever increasing widows peak, down my side burns, over and IN both ears and get this up each nostril & in the time that it takes an individual to focus on one thought & take his mind off of the whole picture and think "jeez mate, you could be a bit more carefull with the shaving soap, you've just jammed it right into both ears an up me hooter", Serge was leaning over me and had actually lit the "cotton bud" transforming it into a miniture flaming torch of accelerant and was inches away from my right ear and gaining fast headed for my nose (at this point I wasn't really sure what was going on but I knew that I didn't want a flaming poker shoved up my right nostrill thank you very much). Suddenly it seemed that in a nano second the whole nonchalent dynamic had taken a turn for the worse . It caught me that much by supprise that I jumped so suddenly out of the chair, I had a shock of pain go through my whole body. The look on my face must have said it all, much to Serge's (and the both the barbers and customers on either side of me) amusement. Turns out that that is the traditional Turkish barbers way of removing unwanted hair. I can't believe that none of my friends has confided in me that I have Koala bear ears, I feel bad for the old fellas on the bus, when unbenown to them, the school kids sit behind them and poke fun at their ears and now I'm one of them ! Why didn't anyone tell me......

Life long buddies.
Steve, Matt & I have known each other for 25 years (jeez, if that makes me feel old, imagine how our Mums must feel....sorry ladies only joking).Fellas that went through school, pubs, clubs, appreticeships & hoilidays together, stuck together through thick and thin,and when it mattered stood shoulder to shoulder as men, together like brothers. This shot is in a pub called The Albert, which was a weekly venture for all of us, (even when Steve split the ranks & went off the rails and went and got himself married, honestly Dawn, that the way that Steve phrases it himself !).So it was quite fitting that we had a night out at the old place. I suppose it had the potential to be a little awkward, nostalgic and slightly lacking of the "old days" because hey,lets not forget here, were all 36 now and all in different stages of our family & career lives, all states of marrige post, present & pending were represented, geographically were not exactly in each others pockets so to speak, we're not so good on the phone etc....but I needent have worried. Steve is married to Dawn with 2 youngsters and the head electrical forman for some big mob in the city and Matthew is (still digging holes and living in sheltered accomadation with Ting tong !)some big shot high voltage leading hand cable jointer working for Englands biggest, so all in all, no one's a rocket scientist but we've all done well. Suffice to say the evening went on untill we were the last ones in the pub, I remember on more than one occasion all 3 of us bent over killing ourselves crying with laughter trying to finnish a story and just genrally remanising about some of the scullduggery & fun times that we got up to when we were growing up in our formative years (which for us was between the ages of 11 to 28). Gentlemen, when I left the pub my cheeks were hurting from laughter and I thank you for it.

Comments

["methuselah"]

Lifelong buddies
Hi dave, what an good account , particularly the last photo - known in fun as the terrible trio.Some things dont change? M.