Series 2, Episode 6: The Elephant Scenario
The Scottish government’s Barbershop Lockdown Exemption Scheme had been extended, and the men of the Millport tonsorium were in position, as the world edged nervously into the final year of human civilisation.
A regular Thursday morning. Hirsutological legend Barney Thomson was standing at the shop window, drinking a cup of coffee, still with the aftertaste of the finest pastry this side of Copenhagen on his lips, looking out over the bleak, grey firth of Clyde; Igor, deaf, mute hunchbacked barbershop über-assistant, was sweeping up at the back; and Keanu, roguish, haircutting sidekick, due to be played by a young Paul Newman in the forthcoming motion picture sequel event – Scenes From The Barbershop Ceiling – was cutting the hair of the first customer of the day, Old Man Rasputin, in for his weekly hair and beard trim.
A regular Thursday morning. Hirsutological legend Barney Thomson was standing at the shop window, drinking a cup of coffee, still with the aftertaste of the finest pastry this side of Copenhagen on his lips, looking out over the bleak, grey firth of Clyde; Igor, deaf, mute hunchbacked barbershop über-assistant, was sweeping up at the back; and Keanu, roguish, haircutting sidekick, due to be played by a young Paul Newman in the forthcoming motion picture sequel event – Scenes From The Barbershop Ceiling – was cutting the hair of the first customer of the day, Old Man Rasputin, in for his weekly hair and beard trim.
The weather outside was frightful, but the coffee was so delightful, and since there was no place to go, everyone was quite content with the regular early morning barbershop routine. There was music playing – Thomas Tallis’s epic opus melancholia This Is The End, Beautiful Friends, The End, And Never Again Shall We Feast Upon Doughnuts Beneath An Opalescent Sky. On the customers’ bench there lay the familiar pile of the day’s unread newspapers. Barney, as always, felt compelled to continue to send his business the way of the newsagent’s, yet few were there amongst men in these dark days who wanted to blight their lives any further than necessary by reading even more news than that to which they were already being subjected, particularly when it was the jaundiced scream of the British press. And so, there they lay, neglected and untouched, as pristine as anything that smells of that much shit could be.
On the top was the Express with, Clap For Boris Returns, As Grateful Nation Thanks Hero PM; beneath which lay the Guardian, Earth Breathes Sigh Of Relief As All Humans Due To Die Of Either Covid Or Stupidity By Summer 2021; the Sun, Giant Boobs Saved Me From Virus, Says Covid Babe, Hours Before Dying; the Telegraph, headline, Blood-Spattered Hancock Ate My Baby, Claims Sad Mum; the Mirror, Despite World News Avalanche, Rees-Mogg Still Manages To Be Earth’s Biggest Cunt; the Independent with You’ll Never Find Me, Says Fat Insurrectionist Prick Who’s Tweeted His Location Every Few Minutes For The Last Ten Years; the Times with Trump Sex Toys Inc Release New Trump Blow-Up Doll So Trump Can Fuck Himself, Again; and the National, Scotland Says Get Tae Fuck, As Trump Plans OJ Simpson Ayrshire Manoeuvre. Few of them would be called upon to pull their weight.
‘What d’you do at the weekend?’ asked Old Man Rasputin, the words emerging from somewhere in his beard, the exact location of his mouth being not entirely clear.
Keanu paused for a moment, looking curiously at Old Man Rasputin in the mirror. The weekend? It was Thursday. Was asking about the previous weekend after midnight on Monday even legal?
‘Seems a long time ago,’ he said. ‘Hard to remember.’
‘Right enough,’ said Old Man Rasputin, as if he hadn’t asked a question beyond all bounds of regular conversational etiquette in the first place. ‘They say that days now have at least thirty-six hours in them. Some of them double that.’
‘Arf,’ said Igor from the back, nodding.
‘Exactly,’ said Old Man Rasputin. ‘Time has never been more malleable. As a concept, it’s in danger of being lost. Like decency and common sense.’
‘Had a customer in yesterday who insisted his watch had started going backwards,’ said Barney, from his position at the window. ‘And right enough, he had more hair when he left, than when he came in.’
Keanu smiled, then returned to the haircut.
‘What?’ said Old Man Rasputin, but Barney didn’t answer.
‘Watched the skiing, I think,’ said Keanu. ‘I watch quite a lot of skiing. Don’t actually care about the sport, but it’s nice looking at all the snow and the mountains and stuff. Very calming.’
‘What channel’s that on?’
‘Eurosport.’
‘Do I get that?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Rasputin. What TV package d’you have?’
‘Fucked if I know. Margaret buys literally everything. Watches all kinds of shite. I’m like that, is there nothing decent on? But it turns out there’s no’. What’s this skiing malarkey then?’
‘You know what skiing is, right?’
‘Fuck off, son.’
‘Well, people do skiing, and they show it on TV. And people watch it.’
‘Sounds shite.’
‘Aye, but there’s snow. And mountains.’
‘Don’t they have to spray fake snow down the run because everywhere’s twenty-five degrees?’ said Barney from the window.
‘Sometimes, but not this year,’ said Keanu. ‘Been tonnes of snow in the Alps. Looks magical, particularly the trees. You know, a cracking big fir tree, covered in snow, etched against a clear blue sky. Lovely. I could sit and watch that on the tele all day.’
Barney stared at the raindrops running down the window, the grey sea and sky beyond, the bleak, grim west of Scotland winter plunging into his head for all the world like he’d been stabbed in the eye with an eight-inch kitchen knife, hope and enthusiasm hosing out of him like a fountain of blood.
‘D’you get topless skiing?’ asked Rasputin suddenly. ‘I’d watch that.’
The morning had moved on, one minute into the next, little to be said for it. There had been two further customers – Big Hannibal No Mates, in for his regular Chianti cut, and Daft Alex, who hadn’t been to a barber since before the first lockdown, and who’d had trouble getting all his hair in through the door, looking for a Deregulated Bolshevik Undercut.
Now the men of the shop were standing at the window – Barney had barely moved from there all day, bar the ten minutes dealing with Big Hannibal – and they were drinking coffee and eating pumpkin pie. Radio 3 was still playing in the background, and although the quiet atmosphere of the shop was currently being bespoiled by ten minutes of the Wagnerian epic calamity opera, Wir Haben Es Gefickt, they could be fairly confident it would be ending soon.
‘We need to talk about the elephant in the room,‘ said Keanu, after he popped the last of the pumpkin pie into his mouth, licked the end of his fingers, and took a sip of coffee. ‘Nice pie, by the way.’
‘I’ll pass it on,’ said Barney.
‘Arf!’
‘Thanks.’
They looked out of the shop window. The rain had stopped, but still the day was bleak and dull, still it presented itself as the polar opposite of a snow-covered pine etched against an Alpine blue sky.
‘You win,’ said Barney, after a while. ‘What’s the elephant?’
‘You keep insisting the buffoon Trump is going to resign, and yet, here we are. Middle of January, and not only is he not resigning, he’s doing everything he can to stay in power. He made a coup attempt, for God’s sake.’
Barney smiled, took a drink of coffee – Columbian, mellow and smooth, with hints of chocolate, liquorice, vanilla, cardamon and Ry Cooder’s Paris, Texas soundtrack album – then indicated the great beyond with his mug. Being one of the few men or women to have predicted that Trump would resign, before, and then again, after the 2020 election, Barney had grown used to being ridiculed.
‘I will concede I was wrong,’ he said, ‘although, to be honest, I don’t think last week was a coup attempt.’
‘You don’t?’
‘Not from him. I mean, there might’ve been plenty of people in the mob who will’ve thought it was a coup, but Trump? I don’t think so.’
‘What d’you think he was trying to get them to do? Raid the canteen? Steal some biscuits?’
‘He doesn’t give a shit. Look at him, he doesn’t ever actually do any presidenting. All he wants to do is play golf and talk about how great he is.’
‘So what was last Wednesday about then?’ asked Igor, albeit, as ever, all that emerged was a peculiar arf from his lips.
‘He’s just a psychopath,’ said Barney.
‘Hmm,’ said Keanu. ‘A serial killer. Nice. Maybe we’ll get him in Millport one day, not like we don’t get our share of serial killers in these parts. And he does own his stupid golf course just down by,’ and he indicated the Ayrshire coast, somewhere in the distance through the murk.
‘The vast majority of psychopaths don’t kill anyone,’ said Barney. ‘It’s just their total lack of empathy. They really don’t give a shit about anything. And last Wednesday was Trump just winding up a crowd, letting them loose, and sitting back watching it on TV, not caring what happened. From the perspective of both sides, he was completely inactive. He neither tried to stop it, nor push it through to any logical conclusion. He just viewed it as entertainment. Didn’t care either way whether people died. Maybe yon haunted scrotum Pence was going to get strung up, maybe not. Maybe democracy would fall, maybe not. Either way he was heading home to eat a burger and snort something, and then he was going to play golf somewhere.’ He paused, took another drink of coffee, then added, ‘Psychopath.’
‘It’s not like psychopaths don’t commit coups though, is it?’ said Keanu, and Igor nodded, and gave him a small dip of the mug in agreement.
Across the road a squabble of gulls landed on the white promenade wall, they argued amongst themselves over a matter that was likely of little consequence, and then they soon lifted off again, soaring away into the breeze, heading out to sea, destined for the gap between the mainland and the island of Wee Cumbrae, where adventurers would travel when seeking the south-west passage to the merengue islands of Latin America.
‘But that’s judging Trump against any kind of standard other than himself. That’s the mistake all these commentators and journalists have been making all these years, and why they really ought to have been speaking to more barbers for the inside scoop.’
‘Can’t argue with that, at least,’ said Keanu.
‘He just wants to shit in the swimming pool, then get out, take a shower, and go and watch everyone else swimming in his shit on TV.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Keanu. ‘Still think it’s not over, though.’
Barney and Igor sipped their coffee and stared out at the world; weather grey, the light dull.
The door opened, and the guru-philosophers of the barbershop turned towards it, each with their coffee cup poised inches below their lips.
‘Haircut?’ asked the young chap, unaware than he had walked into the crucible of new thought at the heart of Scottish Enlightenment 2.0.
‘Hmm,’ said Barney, and he took a moment to look around the shop. ‘I suppose you’ve come to the right place, son. What’ll it be?’
Having spent the morning dreaming of snow-capped mountains and snowy forest trails, snow-covered trees and long walks in the snow, before retreating to an open fire and a mug of hot chocolate, sitting by a window, watching the afternoon snow fall upon the fir trees, as night descended, and the lights of the Alpine town began to sparkle in the freezing air, Keanu had picked up a serendipitous international removals brochure that had arrived in the mail, and was taking a read, while Barney cut the hair of barbershop regular, Old Man McGuire.
2020 was a terrible year for many countries, read Keanu, with few suffering as much from the coronavirus as the UK. Now, with 2021 shaping up to be even more apocalyptically awful, and the UK leading the world in lack of preparedness and governmental incompetence, there has never been a better time to consider living overseas. And there’s no need to be put off by the rank stupidity of Brexit. There may be more paperwork involved, but moving to the EU is still possible, and those twenty-seven countries join a host of other attractive destinations for migration and international travel. Indeed the toughest problem you’ll likely find, with virtually every one of the other 192 countries in the world now being preferable to the UK, is deciding which one to choose. Fortunately, we’ve been doing some of the legwork for you. Don’t take this list as definitive, however, as literally anywhere will do. Honestly, right now, you’d be better off living in Mordor.
‘The fuck d’you want to go there for, son?’ asked Old Man McGuire, glancing over from behind the Sun, which he’d picked up before sitting down to receive his weekly, Mingus McMingus Pompadour Sub-chop from Barney.
‘Looks nice. Lots of snow, everything’s neat and orderly, trains run on time, that kind of thing.’
‘Fifty quid for a sandwich,’ said Old Man McGuire. ‘They hate everyone, you cannae flush the toilet after five p.m., and they’re never going to let you in anyway, son, ‘cause you’re no’ an über-wealthy, corrupt, tax-dodging cunt, which is pretty much the only kinds of people they want.’ He paused, he glanced back at the article he’d been reading – Corrie Star Shags Her Way Out Of Covid Blues – closed the paper, then added, ‘Unless you’re an Albanian footballer.’ He looked back over at Keanu. ‘Can you play football?’
‘No, Mr McGuire,’ said Keanu, smiling. ‘Not bad at FIFA though.’
‘You’ll be lucky if they let you go there on holiday, but since you probably wouldn’t be able to afford the train fare the length of Lake Geneva, no point in getting your knickers in a twist.’
Barney and Keanu shared a smile, the familiar smile that came from many a conversation with Old Man McGuire.
‘Arf,’ said Igor darkly from the rear of the shop, and Keanu looked at him, a little wide-eyed, and swallowed. Igor had stories to tell. Igor had been chased out of many a central and eastern European town by a mob of angry villagers, and Switzerland was no different from Slovakia, Romania, Freedonia, Chewbaccia and Dystopia.
‘Yikes,’ said Keanu, having perfectly understood Igor’s tale of pitchforks, flaming torches, screaming women and lonely nights on desolate mountain tops with only the last Milka bar in the shop for sustenance.
‘Maybe I’ll give Switzerland a miss,’ said Keanu, nodding.
‘Aye, you do that, son,’ said Old Man McGuire, ‘but remember, whichever country you come up with, I’ll have negative comments coming out my arse for it. I know bad stuff about everywhere.’
Keanu laughed, and turned back to the brochure. He’d take it home, he thought, show it to Sophia.
‘Transnistria?’ said Barney, looking at McGuire in the mirror, eyebrows raised.
‘Too thin,’ said McGuire quickly. ‘And there’s fuck all to do…’
Jackets on, cups of warm tea in hand, the men of the shop had come across the road to watch the sun go down behind the hills of Arran, as the afternoon wound its way to a close. Not that there was much of the sun to be seen behind fifteen layers of suffocating, finest Scottish cloud. Nevertheless, there was the fresh, damp chill of a winter’s day by the Clyde to enjoy, with finest tea and a piece of shortbread.
They’d been standing by the wall, looking out over the sea for some time. A few people had passed them by, little conversation had been had. The men of the Millport barbershop were considered renegades, the A-Team of Millport – albeit there were only three of them, and none of them had been in the military, or could fly a helicopter, although to be fair, Barney was kind of scared of flying, so there was that – and people were generally wary of addressing them in a non-haircutting situation.
The gulls were circling, but there didn’t appear to be much intent in their actions, as though they were circling because they had no idea what else to do with themselves.
‘What d’you think of Celtic going to Dubai then?’ said Keanu, ever the first to crack, as though they’d been playing a who-can-keep-quiet-the-longest game. Of course, both Barney and Igor had represented their countries at who-can-keep-quiet-the-longest.
Igor took a slurp of tea, looked out over the waves, and pretended not to have heard. Which you can pull off when you’re deaf.
‘Celtic?’ said Barney. ‘They’re a football team?’
‘Funny,’ said Keanu.
‘We don’t do football.’
‘We talk about football in the shop all the time.’
‘Igor and I don’t do football.’
‘Arf!’
‘You,’ Barney continued, ‘talk to customers about football. We’re currently customer lite, which is why we’re standing over here, with ice cold drinks, plates of delicious tapas, basking in the warm glow of the late afternoon sun.’
Igor gave him a wry glance.
‘It’s not about football, though, is it?’ said Keanu.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No. It’s about the lockdown, it’s about the entitlement of a football club who…’
‘Football,’ said Barney.
‘It’s about the entitlement of an organisation at the heart of Scottish life who think, fuck it, we can do what we want, we’re Celtic. It’s about people who should’ve known better saying, sure, you’re Celtic, on you go, go on holiday or whatever. It’s about no one stopping to think, this is just stupid, by the way. Now they come back, one of their guys has the thing, and they’re having to call up Danny McGrain and Frank McGarvey.’
‘Are they football players?’
Keanu stared out across the waves. In the far distance a freighter, bound for the coffee plantations of Columbia, inched its way across the horizon. A gull squawked loudly, and then settled on a rock, splashed by the spray of waves, just down in front of them. In the bay, a few small boats attached to buoys, chopped back and forth in the swell.
‘They’re old footballers. It was a joke.’
Barney and Igor exchanged a glance.
‘About football?’ said Barney.
‘It’s not about football,’ said Keanu.
‘Sounds to me like it’s about football.’
‘Arf!’
Sure, they had coats and they had warm cups of tea, but to be honest, they weren’t really working. It was late afternoon in January on the Clyde coast, and it was freezing, and there was just nothing really to be done about it.
‘Anyway, I agree with you,’ said Barney.
‘What about?’
‘Your assertion that it was stupid.’
Keanu took a drink, shivered a little as the temperature continued to drop by the second.
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘Glad we sorted that out,’ said Barney. ‘Let’s go inside.’
‘Arf!’ exclaimed Igor, whose fingers had long since turned white.
End of the day. There had been eight customers in all. Quiet times for the barbershop business, as the pandemic’s grip tightened. There were those in the land who thought perhaps it was time for barbershops to be closed, for the normal rules of lockdown to be applied to them, yet none were there in government who could truly bring themselves to advocate the shutdown of the hairdressing industry. Hair was just too important.
Nevertheless, for the most part, the customers were beginning to decide with their feet, and the shop was seeing less and less business as time passed. People were getting used to having hair like an early seventies prog rock guitarist. People were getting used to not getting out of their pyjamas. People were getting used to the restrictions of small houses, a life conducted between the kitchen table, the sofa and the bedroom. Life was changing. The journey of the human race from active hunter-gatherers to flatulent, immovable swamp species had picked up pace.
The men of the shop were sitting around, the Closed sign on the door, drinking the last cup of tea, having been joined by Detective Sergeant Monk, in to grab Barney on her way home.
‘How about you?’ asked Keanu, having outlined their day, such as it had been. It had got to the stage where he could remember and list every customer by name.
‘Oh, there was another shoot-out up at the old Miller place at the top of Weymss Road,’ said Monk, ‘and you know what that’s like.’
‘Lots of bullets flying around, but no one actually killed?’ asked Keanu. ‘Like on shows.’
‘No, lots of people killed. Maybe about seventy. Surprised you didn’t hear the news.’
‘Barney doesn’t let us listen to the news.’
‘There was some close combat fighting, then when we finally got in there, turned out there were, like, a hundred or so zombies in the basement, so we had that on our hands for a while. Then old Miller himself, who’d managed to escape, turned up at the Royal Bank, bomb strapped to his chest, and took about twenty people hostage. So we had to deal with that.’
‘How’d that go?’
‘Not so well. He blew himself up, killed everyone in the place.’
‘Wow. You’d think, since it’s like five doors along the road, we would’ve heard.’
‘You didn’t? Weird.’
She smiled, took a long drink of tea.
‘Did anything actually happen requiring police attention?’
Monk took another drink of tea, tipped the cup at Igor in appreciation, and then made the familiar headline news banner gesture. ‘Underemployed Cops In Jigsaw Triumph.’
‘You did a jigsaw?’
‘Bruegel’s Hunters In The Snow. Well, Thad’s doing it, I just helped him out for a few minutes. You know, in between the kidnappings, the riots and the multiple murders.’
‘Nice picture,’ said Keanu. Then he thought about it, and added, ‘I don’t actually know it.’
‘Shocking,’ said Barney. ‘Taking the taxpayers money, frittering away the time on a jigsaw. If only the Daily Mail could see you now. Hero Cop’s Career In Tatters After Jigsaw Outrage.’
‘I’ll deny everything.’
‘We’ve got it on tape.’
‘Fake Tape Blackmailers Get Ten Years,’ said Monk.
‘Using Money Laundered Through Illegal Jigsaw Scheme, Millport Cop Becomes Kingpin In 2 Billion Pound Drug Smuggling Op,’ said Keanu.
‘Right,’ said Monk, ‘though I’m not entirely sure which newspaper has enough space to have that as a headline.’
‘Bent Cop In Jigsaw Drugs Shame,’ said Keanu, and Barney and Igor laughed.
‘Yeah, all right, kid, calm down,’ said Monk.
‘Tough gig the police, right?’ said Barney. ‘Here you are, keeping us safe from zombies, crime lords, drug gangs and a whole host of serial killers, and this is the thanks you get.’
‘I know, right?’
‘Are you friends with any Tories?’ asked Keanu. ‘I mean, if you are, you’ll probably get away with it.’
‘Isn’t it time you were transferring him to the Ouagadougou branch?’ asked Monk.
‘He did say earlier he fancied travelling.’
‘Jigsawgate Copper Did Nothing Wrong, Claims Gove,’ said Keanu, and finally he started laughing, as he lifted the cup of tea to his mouth.
And that was pretty much that, as there aren’t many discussions that can survive even just the mention of Michael Gove’s name, and a relaxed, good-humoured quiet settled over the shop, as they drank their tea, and watched the raindrops run down the window, as outside evening was upon them, and the day would soon be done.
Nevertheless, there were dark forces out there in the world, after all, there always are, and few would there be on earth who would sleep comfortably this night.
Barney drained his tea, straightened his shoulders, nodded to himself, lifted his eyebrows to Monk in the international sign of it being about time to head off, then said, ‘And it’s a wrap.’
And so it was.
On the top was the Express with, Clap For Boris Returns, As Grateful Nation Thanks Hero PM; beneath which lay the Guardian, Earth Breathes Sigh Of Relief As All Humans Due To Die Of Either Covid Or Stupidity By Summer 2021; the Sun, Giant Boobs Saved Me From Virus, Says Covid Babe, Hours Before Dying; the Telegraph, headline, Blood-Spattered Hancock Ate My Baby, Claims Sad Mum; the Mirror, Despite World News Avalanche, Rees-Mogg Still Manages To Be Earth’s Biggest Cunt; the Independent with You’ll Never Find Me, Says Fat Insurrectionist Prick Who’s Tweeted His Location Every Few Minutes For The Last Ten Years; the Times with Trump Sex Toys Inc Release New Trump Blow-Up Doll So Trump Can Fuck Himself, Again; and the National, Scotland Says Get Tae Fuck, As Trump Plans OJ Simpson Ayrshire Manoeuvre. Few of them would be called upon to pull their weight.
‘What d’you do at the weekend?’ asked Old Man Rasputin, the words emerging from somewhere in his beard, the exact location of his mouth being not entirely clear.
Keanu paused for a moment, looking curiously at Old Man Rasputin in the mirror. The weekend? It was Thursday. Was asking about the previous weekend after midnight on Monday even legal?
‘Seems a long time ago,’ he said. ‘Hard to remember.’
‘Right enough,’ said Old Man Rasputin, as if he hadn’t asked a question beyond all bounds of regular conversational etiquette in the first place. ‘They say that days now have at least thirty-six hours in them. Some of them double that.’
‘Arf,’ said Igor from the back, nodding.
‘Exactly,’ said Old Man Rasputin. ‘Time has never been more malleable. As a concept, it’s in danger of being lost. Like decency and common sense.’
‘Had a customer in yesterday who insisted his watch had started going backwards,’ said Barney, from his position at the window. ‘And right enough, he had more hair when he left, than when he came in.’
Keanu smiled, then returned to the haircut.
‘What?’ said Old Man Rasputin, but Barney didn’t answer.
‘Watched the skiing, I think,’ said Keanu. ‘I watch quite a lot of skiing. Don’t actually care about the sport, but it’s nice looking at all the snow and the mountains and stuff. Very calming.’
‘What channel’s that on?’
‘Eurosport.’
‘Do I get that?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Rasputin. What TV package d’you have?’
‘Fucked if I know. Margaret buys literally everything. Watches all kinds of shite. I’m like that, is there nothing decent on? But it turns out there’s no’. What’s this skiing malarkey then?’
‘You know what skiing is, right?’
‘Fuck off, son.’
‘Well, people do skiing, and they show it on TV. And people watch it.’
‘Sounds shite.’
‘Aye, but there’s snow. And mountains.’
‘Don’t they have to spray fake snow down the run because everywhere’s twenty-five degrees?’ said Barney from the window.
‘Sometimes, but not this year,’ said Keanu. ‘Been tonnes of snow in the Alps. Looks magical, particularly the trees. You know, a cracking big fir tree, covered in snow, etched against a clear blue sky. Lovely. I could sit and watch that on the tele all day.’
Barney stared at the raindrops running down the window, the grey sea and sky beyond, the bleak, grim west of Scotland winter plunging into his head for all the world like he’d been stabbed in the eye with an eight-inch kitchen knife, hope and enthusiasm hosing out of him like a fountain of blood.
‘D’you get topless skiing?’ asked Rasputin suddenly. ‘I’d watch that.’
* * *
Now the men of the shop were standing at the window – Barney had barely moved from there all day, bar the ten minutes dealing with Big Hannibal – and they were drinking coffee and eating pumpkin pie. Radio 3 was still playing in the background, and although the quiet atmosphere of the shop was currently being bespoiled by ten minutes of the Wagnerian epic calamity opera, Wir Haben Es Gefickt, they could be fairly confident it would be ending soon.
‘We need to talk about the elephant in the room,‘ said Keanu, after he popped the last of the pumpkin pie into his mouth, licked the end of his fingers, and took a sip of coffee. ‘Nice pie, by the way.’
‘I’ll pass it on,’ said Barney.
‘Arf!’
‘Thanks.’
They looked out of the shop window. The rain had stopped, but still the day was bleak and dull, still it presented itself as the polar opposite of a snow-covered pine etched against an Alpine blue sky.
‘You win,’ said Barney, after a while. ‘What’s the elephant?’
‘You keep insisting the buffoon Trump is going to resign, and yet, here we are. Middle of January, and not only is he not resigning, he’s doing everything he can to stay in power. He made a coup attempt, for God’s sake.’
Barney smiled, took a drink of coffee – Columbian, mellow and smooth, with hints of chocolate, liquorice, vanilla, cardamon and Ry Cooder’s Paris, Texas soundtrack album – then indicated the great beyond with his mug. Being one of the few men or women to have predicted that Trump would resign, before, and then again, after the 2020 election, Barney had grown used to being ridiculed.
‘I will concede I was wrong,’ he said, ‘although, to be honest, I don’t think last week was a coup attempt.’
‘You don’t?’
‘Not from him. I mean, there might’ve been plenty of people in the mob who will’ve thought it was a coup, but Trump? I don’t think so.’
‘What d’you think he was trying to get them to do? Raid the canteen? Steal some biscuits?’
‘He doesn’t give a shit. Look at him, he doesn’t ever actually do any presidenting. All he wants to do is play golf and talk about how great he is.’
‘So what was last Wednesday about then?’ asked Igor, albeit, as ever, all that emerged was a peculiar arf from his lips.
‘He’s just a psychopath,’ said Barney.
‘Hmm,’ said Keanu. ‘A serial killer. Nice. Maybe we’ll get him in Millport one day, not like we don’t get our share of serial killers in these parts. And he does own his stupid golf course just down by,’ and he indicated the Ayrshire coast, somewhere in the distance through the murk.
‘The vast majority of psychopaths don’t kill anyone,’ said Barney. ‘It’s just their total lack of empathy. They really don’t give a shit about anything. And last Wednesday was Trump just winding up a crowd, letting them loose, and sitting back watching it on TV, not caring what happened. From the perspective of both sides, he was completely inactive. He neither tried to stop it, nor push it through to any logical conclusion. He just viewed it as entertainment. Didn’t care either way whether people died. Maybe yon haunted scrotum Pence was going to get strung up, maybe not. Maybe democracy would fall, maybe not. Either way he was heading home to eat a burger and snort something, and then he was going to play golf somewhere.’ He paused, took another drink of coffee, then added, ‘Psychopath.’
‘It’s not like psychopaths don’t commit coups though, is it?’ said Keanu, and Igor nodded, and gave him a small dip of the mug in agreement.
Across the road a squabble of gulls landed on the white promenade wall, they argued amongst themselves over a matter that was likely of little consequence, and then they soon lifted off again, soaring away into the breeze, heading out to sea, destined for the gap between the mainland and the island of Wee Cumbrae, where adventurers would travel when seeking the south-west passage to the merengue islands of Latin America.
‘But that’s judging Trump against any kind of standard other than himself. That’s the mistake all these commentators and journalists have been making all these years, and why they really ought to have been speaking to more barbers for the inside scoop.’
‘Can’t argue with that, at least,’ said Keanu.
‘He just wants to shit in the swimming pool, then get out, take a shower, and go and watch everyone else swimming in his shit on TV.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Keanu. ‘Still think it’s not over, though.’
Barney and Igor sipped their coffee and stared out at the world; weather grey, the light dull.
The door opened, and the guru-philosophers of the barbershop turned towards it, each with their coffee cup poised inches below their lips.
‘Haircut?’ asked the young chap, unaware than he had walked into the crucible of new thought at the heart of Scottish Enlightenment 2.0.
‘Hmm,’ said Barney, and he took a moment to look around the shop. ‘I suppose you’ve come to the right place, son. What’ll it be?’
* * *
Having spent the morning dreaming of snow-capped mountains and snowy forest trails, snow-covered trees and long walks in the snow, before retreating to an open fire and a mug of hot chocolate, sitting by a window, watching the afternoon snow fall upon the fir trees, as night descended, and the lights of the Alpine town began to sparkle in the freezing air, Keanu had picked up a serendipitous international removals brochure that had arrived in the mail, and was taking a read, while Barney cut the hair of barbershop regular, Old Man McGuire.
2020 was a terrible year for many countries, read Keanu, with few suffering as much from the coronavirus as the UK. Now, with 2021 shaping up to be even more apocalyptically awful, and the UK leading the world in lack of preparedness and governmental incompetence, there has never been a better time to consider living overseas. And there’s no need to be put off by the rank stupidity of Brexit. There may be more paperwork involved, but moving to the EU is still possible, and those twenty-seven countries join a host of other attractive destinations for migration and international travel. Indeed the toughest problem you’ll likely find, with virtually every one of the other 192 countries in the world now being preferable to the UK, is deciding which one to choose. Fortunately, we’ve been doing some of the legwork for you. Don’t take this list as definitive, however, as literally anywhere will do. Honestly, right now, you’d be better off living in Mordor.
‘The fuck d’you want to go there for, son?’ asked Old Man McGuire, glancing over from behind the Sun, which he’d picked up before sitting down to receive his weekly, Mingus McMingus Pompadour Sub-chop from Barney.
‘Looks nice. Lots of snow, everything’s neat and orderly, trains run on time, that kind of thing.’
‘Fifty quid for a sandwich,’ said Old Man McGuire. ‘They hate everyone, you cannae flush the toilet after five p.m., and they’re never going to let you in anyway, son, ‘cause you’re no’ an über-wealthy, corrupt, tax-dodging cunt, which is pretty much the only kinds of people they want.’ He paused, he glanced back at the article he’d been reading – Corrie Star Shags Her Way Out Of Covid Blues – closed the paper, then added, ‘Unless you’re an Albanian footballer.’ He looked back over at Keanu. ‘Can you play football?’
‘No, Mr McGuire,’ said Keanu, smiling. ‘Not bad at FIFA though.’
‘You’ll be lucky if they let you go there on holiday, but since you probably wouldn’t be able to afford the train fare the length of Lake Geneva, no point in getting your knickers in a twist.’
Barney and Keanu shared a smile, the familiar smile that came from many a conversation with Old Man McGuire.
‘Arf,’ said Igor darkly from the rear of the shop, and Keanu looked at him, a little wide-eyed, and swallowed. Igor had stories to tell. Igor had been chased out of many a central and eastern European town by a mob of angry villagers, and Switzerland was no different from Slovakia, Romania, Freedonia, Chewbaccia and Dystopia.
‘Yikes,’ said Keanu, having perfectly understood Igor’s tale of pitchforks, flaming torches, screaming women and lonely nights on desolate mountain tops with only the last Milka bar in the shop for sustenance.
‘Maybe I’ll give Switzerland a miss,’ said Keanu, nodding.
‘Aye, you do that, son,’ said Old Man McGuire, ‘but remember, whichever country you come up with, I’ll have negative comments coming out my arse for it. I know bad stuff about everywhere.’
Keanu laughed, and turned back to the brochure. He’d take it home, he thought, show it to Sophia.
‘Transnistria?’ said Barney, looking at McGuire in the mirror, eyebrows raised.
‘Too thin,’ said McGuire quickly. ‘And there’s fuck all to do…’
* * *
Jackets on, cups of warm tea in hand, the men of the shop had come across the road to watch the sun go down behind the hills of Arran, as the afternoon wound its way to a close. Not that there was much of the sun to be seen behind fifteen layers of suffocating, finest Scottish cloud. Nevertheless, there was the fresh, damp chill of a winter’s day by the Clyde to enjoy, with finest tea and a piece of shortbread.
They’d been standing by the wall, looking out over the sea for some time. A few people had passed them by, little conversation had been had. The men of the Millport barbershop were considered renegades, the A-Team of Millport – albeit there were only three of them, and none of them had been in the military, or could fly a helicopter, although to be fair, Barney was kind of scared of flying, so there was that – and people were generally wary of addressing them in a non-haircutting situation.
The gulls were circling, but there didn’t appear to be much intent in their actions, as though they were circling because they had no idea what else to do with themselves.
‘What d’you think of Celtic going to Dubai then?’ said Keanu, ever the first to crack, as though they’d been playing a who-can-keep-quiet-the-longest game. Of course, both Barney and Igor had represented their countries at who-can-keep-quiet-the-longest.
Igor took a slurp of tea, looked out over the waves, and pretended not to have heard. Which you can pull off when you’re deaf.
‘Celtic?’ said Barney. ‘They’re a football team?’
‘Funny,’ said Keanu.
‘We don’t do football.’
‘We talk about football in the shop all the time.’
‘Igor and I don’t do football.’
‘Arf!’
‘You,’ Barney continued, ‘talk to customers about football. We’re currently customer lite, which is why we’re standing over here, with ice cold drinks, plates of delicious tapas, basking in the warm glow of the late afternoon sun.’
Igor gave him a wry glance.
‘It’s not about football, though, is it?’ said Keanu.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No. It’s about the lockdown, it’s about the entitlement of a football club who…’
‘Football,’ said Barney.
‘It’s about the entitlement of an organisation at the heart of Scottish life who think, fuck it, we can do what we want, we’re Celtic. It’s about people who should’ve known better saying, sure, you’re Celtic, on you go, go on holiday or whatever. It’s about no one stopping to think, this is just stupid, by the way. Now they come back, one of their guys has the thing, and they’re having to call up Danny McGrain and Frank McGarvey.’
‘Are they football players?’
Keanu stared out across the waves. In the far distance a freighter, bound for the coffee plantations of Columbia, inched its way across the horizon. A gull squawked loudly, and then settled on a rock, splashed by the spray of waves, just down in front of them. In the bay, a few small boats attached to buoys, chopped back and forth in the swell.
‘They’re old footballers. It was a joke.’
Barney and Igor exchanged a glance.
‘About football?’ said Barney.
‘It’s not about football,’ said Keanu.
‘Sounds to me like it’s about football.’
‘Arf!’
Sure, they had coats and they had warm cups of tea, but to be honest, they weren’t really working. It was late afternoon in January on the Clyde coast, and it was freezing, and there was just nothing really to be done about it.
‘Anyway, I agree with you,’ said Barney.
‘What about?’
‘Your assertion that it was stupid.’
Keanu took a drink, shivered a little as the temperature continued to drop by the second.
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘Glad we sorted that out,’ said Barney. ‘Let’s go inside.’
‘Arf!’ exclaimed Igor, whose fingers had long since turned white.
* * *
End of the day. There had been eight customers in all. Quiet times for the barbershop business, as the pandemic’s grip tightened. There were those in the land who thought perhaps it was time for barbershops to be closed, for the normal rules of lockdown to be applied to them, yet none were there in government who could truly bring themselves to advocate the shutdown of the hairdressing industry. Hair was just too important.
Nevertheless, for the most part, the customers were beginning to decide with their feet, and the shop was seeing less and less business as time passed. People were getting used to having hair like an early seventies prog rock guitarist. People were getting used to not getting out of their pyjamas. People were getting used to the restrictions of small houses, a life conducted between the kitchen table, the sofa and the bedroom. Life was changing. The journey of the human race from active hunter-gatherers to flatulent, immovable swamp species had picked up pace.
The men of the shop were sitting around, the Closed sign on the door, drinking the last cup of tea, having been joined by Detective Sergeant Monk, in to grab Barney on her way home.
‘How about you?’ asked Keanu, having outlined their day, such as it had been. It had got to the stage where he could remember and list every customer by name.
‘Oh, there was another shoot-out up at the old Miller place at the top of Weymss Road,’ said Monk, ‘and you know what that’s like.’
‘Lots of bullets flying around, but no one actually killed?’ asked Keanu. ‘Like on shows.’
‘No, lots of people killed. Maybe about seventy. Surprised you didn’t hear the news.’
‘Barney doesn’t let us listen to the news.’
‘There was some close combat fighting, then when we finally got in there, turned out there were, like, a hundred or so zombies in the basement, so we had that on our hands for a while. Then old Miller himself, who’d managed to escape, turned up at the Royal Bank, bomb strapped to his chest, and took about twenty people hostage. So we had to deal with that.’
‘How’d that go?’
‘Not so well. He blew himself up, killed everyone in the place.’
‘Wow. You’d think, since it’s like five doors along the road, we would’ve heard.’
‘You didn’t? Weird.’
She smiled, took a long drink of tea.
‘Did anything actually happen requiring police attention?’
Monk took another drink of tea, tipped the cup at Igor in appreciation, and then made the familiar headline news banner gesture. ‘Underemployed Cops In Jigsaw Triumph.’
‘You did a jigsaw?’
‘Bruegel’s Hunters In The Snow. Well, Thad’s doing it, I just helped him out for a few minutes. You know, in between the kidnappings, the riots and the multiple murders.’
‘Nice picture,’ said Keanu. Then he thought about it, and added, ‘I don’t actually know it.’
‘Shocking,’ said Barney. ‘Taking the taxpayers money, frittering away the time on a jigsaw. If only the Daily Mail could see you now. Hero Cop’s Career In Tatters After Jigsaw Outrage.’
‘I’ll deny everything.’
‘We’ve got it on tape.’
‘Fake Tape Blackmailers Get Ten Years,’ said Monk.
‘Using Money Laundered Through Illegal Jigsaw Scheme, Millport Cop Becomes Kingpin In 2 Billion Pound Drug Smuggling Op,’ said Keanu.
‘Right,’ said Monk, ‘though I’m not entirely sure which newspaper has enough space to have that as a headline.’
‘Bent Cop In Jigsaw Drugs Shame,’ said Keanu, and Barney and Igor laughed.
‘Yeah, all right, kid, calm down,’ said Monk.
‘Tough gig the police, right?’ said Barney. ‘Here you are, keeping us safe from zombies, crime lords, drug gangs and a whole host of serial killers, and this is the thanks you get.’
‘I know, right?’
‘Are you friends with any Tories?’ asked Keanu. ‘I mean, if you are, you’ll probably get away with it.’
‘Isn’t it time you were transferring him to the Ouagadougou branch?’ asked Monk.
‘He did say earlier he fancied travelling.’
‘Jigsawgate Copper Did Nothing Wrong, Claims Gove,’ said Keanu, and finally he started laughing, as he lifted the cup of tea to his mouth.
And that was pretty much that, as there aren’t many discussions that can survive even just the mention of Michael Gove’s name, and a relaxed, good-humoured quiet settled over the shop, as they drank their tea, and watched the raindrops run down the window, as outside evening was upon them, and the day would soon be done.
Nevertheless, there were dark forces out there in the world, after all, there always are, and few would there be on earth who would sleep comfortably this night.
Barney drained his tea, straightened his shoulders, nodded to himself, lifted his eyebrows to Monk in the international sign of it being about time to head off, then said, ‘And it’s a wrap.’
And so it was.
