Series 2, Episode 8: The Ice Cream Absurdity

‘They can give us these dates, they can make promises, but it’s all so far away,’ said Keanu. ‘Now, this is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but with the silence of a never-ending lockdown, trapped in a cycle of death, despair and endless repeats of Midsomer Murders.’

Barney Thomson, staggering barbershop genius of legend, and Keanu McPherson, barbershop sidekick pursuivant, were standing at the window of their Millport shop, looking out upon the world. The world outside the window was so dull and grey and still, they could have been watching a black and white Ingmar Bergman movie from the fifties. One of the miserable ones.

They were drinking coffee, waiting for shop sweeper-upper Igor to return from the baker’s with that day’s supply of fresh pastries. The barbershop had only been open twenty-nine minutes, yet already it had the feel of the kind of day when customers would be scarce. The lockdown barbershop exemption in Scotland was beginning to feel like a luxury, most accepting that it only had cross-party Holyrood support as politicians on all sides of the chamber were concerned about how they looked. Many observed that it would be nice if they were more concerned with the amount of shite they talked, but looks, as ever with politicians, were of more importance.

And after all, who can blame them? In politics, appearances are everything. If Ed Miliband, buoyed by sensational hair, hadn’t uttered the famous words, ‘Fuck, aye, I’ll have a roll ‘n’ bacon, what could go wrong?’ Britain would still be in the EU, the UK wouldn’t have been Covid Death Per Population Champion of the World, and everyone in the land would be eating caviar and Lindt chocolate for breakfast. But he had to have that bacon fucking sandwich.

Every morning at the Milibands, Justine says, ‘Roll ‘n’ bacon, Ed?’ and Ed says, ‘Never gets old, love. I’ll have a single shredded wheat with a slice of banana, thanks.’

‘Getting bored?’ said Barney.

‘Yep. The whole thing’s driving me nuts. They really need to open shit up right now. Everyone’s going mental.’

Barney gave him a sideways glance and a small smile.

‘Except you,’ said Keanu, ‘who appear to be living your best life.’

‘Look on the bright side, kid,’ said Barney. ‘We’re in the UK, rather than Australia or New Zealand. Down there, they get one case, and they shut down entire cities. Here, we get down to several thousand cases, and people are like Scooby Doo when someone mentions snacks. You’ll be… doing whatever it is you think you usually can do in Millport soon enough.’

‘Fancy a couple of weeks in Hawaii actually.’

‘Sounds nice,’ said Barney. He left it a moment, then added, ‘Don’t think we’ll be able to spare you, though. It’s going to be pretty busy around here when lockdown ends.’

He laughed quietly to himself, and Keanu – who would likely never end up going to Hawaii for two weeks, because most people don’t, let’s be honest – smiled ruefully and shook his head.

Somewhere out in the world, the clock struck nine, though not the clock on the wall in the shop, which just ticked its steady way from one second to the next. Radios played the news, and people settled in for the morning’s headlines. Matt Hancock nominates self for Nobel Smug Wanker Prize…Still no vaccine for stupidity, lament scientists…Salmond issues Sturgeon naked mud wrestling challenge…Seeing better options, Brits start emigrating to Mordor… America pretty much already fucked, says Biden…

The door opened, and in walked Igor, a large bag of pastries in each hand.

‘Arf!’ he said.

‘Just in time,’ said Keanu smiling.

‘I’ll stick the kettle on for a fresh cup,’ said Barney.

And thus did the day begin.

 

* * *

 

‘It’s like watching Scotland play rugby,’ said Tom Tugenbottom, in for his monthly 112-Gender Pompadour Aftercut.

‘What is?’ asked Keanu, snapping back into the conversation, having drifted off.

‘Life.’

Keanu looked at Tugenbottom in the mirror, nodding as he did so, aware he was still out of the loop.

‘Life is like watching Scotland play rugby?’

‘Aye.’

Another moment, then Keanu decided he probably ought to resume the cut, rather than wallow in his own confusion.

‘How’s that then?’

‘I said.’

Keanu was aware that Barney, still standing at the window watching the waves and the sky and the gulls and the packet ships out of Weymss Bay heading for the south-west passage to the penguin islands of the South Atlantic, was smiling silently to himself. Hears everything, thought Keanu.

‘Aye,’ said Keanu, ‘but if you’re going to put that kind of major philosophical thesis into the barbershop realm, you kind of have to flesh it out, mate.’

‘Hmm. Not so sure about fleshing it out. Basically you’ve got two states of being: one where you know everything’s shite, and the one where you start to get a bit optimistic, then it turns out everything’s shite anyway.’

He looked at Keanu in the mirror, while Keanu avoided his gaze, and continued to snip away at the top of his head.

‘It’s not going to get me in the Barbershop Customers Hall of Fame, is it?’

‘Probably not,’ said Keanu. ‘I think rugby itself is the problem. All the arbitrary rules, and the endless scrums, and the kickers taking forever to kick a penalty that was randomly awarded in the first place, when the ref blew his whistle and pointed at a bunch of men in a big heap, one of whom had his arm in the wrong place.’

‘See they kickers,’ said Tugenbottom, warming to his subject, now that Keanu had engaged, ‘drive you nuts, by the way.’ At the window, Barney used his superpower – elective deafness – to tune out the conversation, and to submerge himself in the melancholic still of the blue-grey sea. ‘Yon Owen Farrell. Holy fucking side-eye, Batman. It’s like every time he takes a kick he says to the ref, I’ve got a minute, right? and the ref says, have five, mate. Then he stands there like he has to sneak up on the posts in case they’ll move. Our Greig did it ‘n’ all, but at least he wasn’t as bad as that fucking guy.’

Igor enjoyed watching rugby. As a younger man he’d been a decent hooker, back in the early days of the Romanian rugby renaissance. Indeed, there were some who traced the downfall of Romania as a rugby nation to the time Igor was chased out of the country by pitchfork and torch-wielding villagers, but rugby commentators generally considered the two incidents coincidental rather than interconnected. Now, with a rare bit of rugby chatter in the shop, he leant on his broom, half listening in his own peculiar way, and half reminiscing about the glory days in old Hunedoara.

‘It’d be the easiest thing on earth to get rid of it, though,’ said Tugenbottom.

‘Give them ten seconds to kick the ball rather than an hour?’ said Keanu, who realised he’d released the kraken.

‘Aye, well, there’s that. But I was thinking they need to start when they’re young. The first time Wee Billy takes eight minutes to kick a conversion from under the posts, the teacher needs to call him over and say, hey, Wee Billy, see that thing you did with the kick there? If you do that again, you’re finished, and Tyler gets to take the kicks for the rest of the season. But Tyler’s shite, says Wee Billy. Aye, he is, but at least he’s no’ a wee prick. That’d sort him out, right?’

‘Aye,’ said Keanu.

‘And another thing,’ began Tugenbottom, and so passed the next several hours, Keanu locked in the Dante’s Inferno of mindless rugby chatter.

 

* * *

 

There had been a couple of customers, although not so that the day could have been described as getting going or picking up. One of them had ruffled the neat pile of the day’s newspapers that lay on the customers’ bench, attracted by the banner headline of the Telegraph – Cry God For Boris, England And St George!

There was something about that unruly pile. Usually Igor would have straightened it out, or Barney would have sat down, had a quick look through the headlines, then left them neatly stacked. But today that pile seemed to have something to say, speaking as it did of the old times, when the shop was busy, and there was no point in keeping the papers neat and orderly, as another customer would be along shortly to rummage through. The pile was the foreshadowing of the summer to come, when the flowers would be in bloom, the ice cream would melt on the vine and the customers would be aplenty. And while Barney had embraced lockdown the way Brexiters embrace Spitfires, he appreciated that others who walked amongst them – Keanu, for example – were keen for it to be over.

And so, the Telegraph was now in the middle of the pile, lost in a sea of print media lies and disinformation. On the top was The Mail, headline, New Manipulated Stats Show UK With World’s Lowest Covid Death Rate; beneath which lay the Guardian, Matt Hancock Can Just Fuck Off; the Express, Oxford Reveal Vaccine Made From Distilled Essence of Boris Sex Appeal; the National, Sturgeon Takes Out 17 Dissenting MPs In Night Of The Long Chib; the Sun, Love Island Babe Wakes From Covid Coma With New Boobs, Speaking Pure Maths; and the Mirror, Blair Returns With 5 Great Reasons For New Iraq Invasion.

There were currently no customers, and the men of the shop were enjoying a mug of tea and a doughnut.

‘Amazing that none of us has put on any weight,’ said Keanu, through a mouthful of jam-filled, strawberry-frosted, sugary goodness. They were standing at the window, looking out on the unchanging grey world of Millport in late February. ‘I mean, we literally eat six pastries a day each.’

‘When you eat a pastry for the right reasons, it doesn’t contain any calories,’ said Barney, and Igor nodded.

‘Is that actual science?’

‘More or less.’

‘Decent.’

And so, for a length of time that seemed peculiar given that it doesn’t actually take that long to eat a doughnut, the men watched the world, drinking tea, and eating the kind of endless leavened fried dough deliciousness that only usually exists in fiction.

There was little action outside to amuse them, but they didn’t mind. They had the clouds and the distant hills, the everchanging seascape. A lone yacht passed from left to right, coming from beyond Farland Point, travelling between the Cumbrae islands, heading, they supposed, for the Kyles of Bute. Far to the right, in view for no more than a minute or two, the Vanguard-class Royal Navy submarine HMS Velociraptor, passing on its way from HMNB Clyde in Faslane, to carry out dinosaur patrol in the waters off the coast of Costa Rica. The gulls were a little more sparse than usual, which meant, more than likely, that the giant sea eagles had returned, although they were not known to be nesting in the area. Having lost a few of their number, the cries of the gulls were even more melancholic than normal, lamentations to haunt the soul.

‘What d’you last night?’ said Keanu suddenly, deciding it was time for a little light conversation, the gulls, perhaps, eating away at the core of his id, threatening to drag him into the depths.

‘Arf,’ said Igor.

‘Oh, right,’ said Keanu. ‘Was it any good?’

‘Arf.’

‘Nice. Might give it a go.’

Igor nodded, then gave Keanu the raised eyebrow of inquiry. After all, anyone who asks the question what d’you do last night? more than likely has something to talk about, be it of little significance or not.

‘We watched News Of The World. Decent movie,’ he said.

‘An in-depth exposé of the corruption at the heart of the Murdoch empire?’ asked Barney.

‘You’re not really up-to-date with movies, are you, old man?’

‘I saw the most recent Sean Connery.’

‘From 2003?’

‘So, News of The World, nothing to do with the nefarious Murdoch then?’

‘Tom Hanks, set in the aftermath of the American civil war. He travels from town to town reading the news. It’s like a live radio bulletin.’

‘Was that a thing?’

‘No idea, but it looks authentic, sounds plausible, so you know, from now on I will believe it was a thing.’

‘Did you Google it?’

‘I enjoyed the movie, but it turns out I’m not interested enough in whether it was an actual thing, to spend thirty seconds on the Internet finding out.

‘Every second on the Internet counts, after all.’

‘Arf,’ said Igor, nodding.

The men had all finished their doughnuts at the same time, and now they looked out to sea, mugs of tea in hand, taking in the day.

‘But it was a good evocation of the chaos and lingering danger at the end of a conflict. I mean, we talk about WWII all the time in this country, like endlessly…’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Arf!’

‘Exactly. But not 1946 so much. We never talk about 1946. 1946 was an absolute, wild west shitshow in Europe. All sorts of unsavoury things went on. There are probably lots of really dark and grim European movies about it that we don’t see, because we’re too busy watching Dad’s Army and The Great Escape.’

‘We are who we are,’ said Barney, gloomily. ‘Stop me if my philosophy gets too complicated to follow.’

‘Just about keeping up,’ said Keanu, smiling.

‘Let’s not talk of Britain,’ said Barney. ‘It’s too depressing. Tell us about Tom Hanks.’

‘Nice film. Hanks is as Hanks does. There’s an underlying current of danger, but overall there’s a feeling of optimism, of emerging from the darkness. The movie’s about a kind of father-daughter relationship with this wee lassie he stumbles across, and she’s great. Doesn’t have to speak much.’

‘I like movies with characters who don’t speak much.’

‘Losing fifteen minutes in screen time wouldn’t have killed it, but there’s virtually not a movie released in the last fifty years you couldn’t say that about. Apart from Avengers Endgame, which could’ve lost two hours and fifteen minutes.’

‘Sold,’ said Barney. ‘I’ll take it up with the sergeant, and perhaps we’ll watch it tonight.’

Keanu took a drink of tea. Amazing that it was still the perfect temperature, almost as though an outside force was controlling their environment.

‘You don’t have Netflix,’ he said after a while.

‘What’s that?’

Keanu smiled, didn’t look at him. Even Barney knew what Netflix was.

‘Perhaps the sergeant will have someone else’s illegally-gotten Netflix in a storeroom somewhere, she can bring it home and we can use it.’

Keanu rolled his eyes. Igor sniggered. Barney stared straight ahead, watching as a sea eagle plunged from upon high, removing an innocent bystander of a gull from the game of life as he swooped.

 

* * *

 

‘You know me, I’m no’ one to complain.’

There was a moment of silence in the shop, while Keanu, Barney, Igor, Barney’s customer Three-Eyed Angus, and the shop itself considered the words, tossed them around, rearranged them to see if they made any more sense, then accepted that they’d been said as they were, and that Old Man McGuire, from whose mouth they’d come, was basically full of some amount of shite sometimes.

‘But you think you might this time, Mr McGuire?’ said Keanu, who was giving Old Man McGuire his weekly bleached textured crop cut.

‘I mean, I get it, don’t get me wrong. I get why some of these wankers write some of the shite they do on packets. People are stupid. You can’t expect anything from Muppets, other than Muppet behaviour, right?’

‘I agree, Mr McGuire,’ said Keanu. ‘Although I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about.’

‘Toblerone ice cream bars,’ said McGuire.

‘Of course.’

‘Didnae even know that was a thing. I mean, it shouldn’t be, but it is, so there we are.’

Mid-afternoon in the shop, the day continuing as days did in barbershops. Customers came and went, outside the window the weather came and went, here some rain, here some cloud, here the wind, and here the occasional burst of sunshine or the clatter of hail.

There had been eleven customers all day. Doughnuts had been eaten, tea and coffee had been drunk, there had been discussions on the great topics of the day, and all the while Igor had kept the floor immaculately clean.

Now it was gone four in the afternoon, late February, the dark of evening still a couple of hours away. Barney was giving Three-Eyed Angus a decapitated head of John the Baptist cut, while Igor was taking a moment, leaning on his broom, to admire the beauty of a clean floor, and to listen to Old Man McGuire’s latest forlorn meditations on the iniquities of the world. If that was what one wanted to call them.

‘Now look, son, don’t get me wrong. I get it. When you’ve got a packet of a thing, like, I don’t know, fucking chicken nuggets or something, and on the front there’s a picture of chicken nuggets, and they’re on a plate, and next to them on the plate there’s a wee tub of ketchup, and there’s a few salad leaves because we’re all supposed to be eating fucking salad now, underneath that they have to write serving suggestion. I mean, I fucking get it, even if they two words are written so small that no cunt can see it anyway, but if they don’t write serving suggestion, some arsehole’s going to say, hang on a second, I thought there was going to be fresh lettuce and half a tomato in this box in the freezer section.’

‘Always questionable,’ said Keanu, ‘whether people are stupid or just at it.’

‘Aye,’ said McGuire. ‘And either way, they can get to fuck. Now, here’s the thing.’

He paused to look around the shop. Gauging how much attention he was getting. Pleased, yet annoyed, to see that everyone was listening to him. Even Barney, who wasn’t much of a listener, truth be told.

‘I’m in the supermarket the other day, and I’m walking past those end bits, you know, where they stick all the shite they can’t get rid of, and they take twenty pence off and pitch it to you like it’s exciting. Like, I don’t know, three sheeps’ baws for the price of two, or some shite like yon. And there was a box of four Toblerone ice creams. Who knew that was a thing?’

‘I did,’ said Three-Eyed Angus, from beneath Barney’s scissors. ‘I love Toblerone ice cream.’

‘Aye, well you can fuck off, son, I’d never heard of them, that’s what’s important here. So, I think to myself, Agnes’ll like yon shite, and I might not hate it, so I’ll get a box. A box of four, right. Two each.’

‘You nailed the maths,’ said Keanu, smiling.

‘You can fuck off ‘n’ all, and that’s no’ maths, that’s arithmetic, so calm the fuck down. I get home, stick the ice cream bars in the freezer, nothing happens for the rest of the day, because literally nothing’s happening at the moment, then we have dinner, and after dinner I remembered the ice cream bars, and I says to Agnes, fancy an ice cream bar, and she says, you bought ice cream bars? and I say, fuck’s sake, I wouldn’t be offering you a fucking ice cream bar if I hadn’t, would I? and she says, aye, why the fuck not, and I get us two Toblerone ice cream bars from the freezer, and hand them over, and Agnes is like, Toblerone fucking ice cream bars, who knew that was a thing?’

‘I did,’ said Three-Eyed Angus, laughing, and this time Old Man McGuire just slung him a look, then continued talking.

‘And there we are, sitting at the table, listening to BTS and watching the news on the tele with the sound off, and I’m about to unwrap the packet, and then there it is.’

‘Serving suggestion?’

‘Aye!’

‘They thought you should eat it with lettuce and half a tomato?’

‘Whit? Naw! All it was, was a picture of the fucking chocolate bar. The serving suggestion – in nine fucking languages by the way – was that you should take the wrapper off. I mean, how many ways can you tell a chocolate ice cream wrapper to fuck off?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Keanu, laughing, ‘how many ways did you find, Mr McGuire?’

McGuire scowled at Keanu in the mirror, and then, in his regular sign of accepting that he was done complaining for the day, he slumped down a little further into his chair, his neck disappearing another centimetre or two below the line of the black cape.

‘Surprised you listen to BTS, there, Mr McGuire,’ said Keanu. ‘You like K-pop then?’

‘Think it’s shite,’ said McGuire grumpily. ‘Agnes likes it. She fancies a’ they young Korean blokes. No’ slow to tell me about it either. But see if I suggests she dresses up like Wonder Woman…’

Another grumble, another scowl, another small slump deeper into the barbers’ chair of disgruntlement.

‘I quite like BTS,’ said Three-Eyed Angus after a few moments, although really it was just out of badness, because he didn’t actually know any BTS, except the one that was used for the Samsung Galaxy advert, but since he hadn’t known that was BTS at the time, it didn’t count.

 

* * *

 

Another day in the bag, the men of the shop sitting around investing the end of the day with the solemnity, the quiet celebration and the cup of tea it deserved. For Barney Thomson, seeker of a quiet life, it seemed there’d been a bit more conversation than usual.

Outside the day had turned colder than expected, as evening spread across the land. There was more rain in the air, and the sea was becoming a little more agitated, so that the crews of the old clippers headed for the narrow passageway south were apprehensive about what awaited them in the Irish Sea, and beyond, south-east, to the South China Sea.

Quite a long way south-east, to be fair.

‘I think we need some new anti-conversation strategies,’ said Barney.

‘Arf,’ said Igor, nodding.

Keanu smiled and shook his head.

‘What have you got in mind, boss?’

‘Not sure,’ said Barney, as he looked contemplatively out of the window, out to the sea and the great beyond. ‘I feel like we’ve tried most things.’

‘Think you have to accept, boss, that people come to the barber’s shop to chat. Particularly at the moment, when they can’t go anywhere else.’

‘Maybe we start a rumour that speaking, even with a mask on, increases the chance of infection spread by, like, eight thousand percent. We could start lobbying Holyrood to ban speaking to help thwart the spread of the virus. No conversation except in your own home.’

He looked round at Igor and Keanu, who were sitting on the barbers’ chairs. ‘Think that would work?’

‘Arf!’ said Igor, enthusiastically.

‘Think you’re screwed, boss,’ said Keanu. ‘It’s too late. Maybe last summer, or at the height of hospitalisations this winter, but people are done with this shit. They’re ready to throw off the shackles, get out there, eat, drink and be merry. And everyone has a lot to say.’ A moment, then he added, ‘A lot.’

Barney nodded slowly, his head dropped a little bit lower, he and Igor shared a look of quiet despair, and then he turned away and looked outside.

The day, in the brief time he’d turned his back on it, had died a little more, the sun had sunk a little lower in the sky, the darkness had crept a little further across the water.

This, thought Barney Thomson, is where we are, forever on the edge of night. And so the day in the shop was done.

Series 2, Episode 7: The Silence Imperative

‘What’ll we talk about now?’
The men of the Millport barbershop were in position, standing at the window, looking out on the world, drinking a fresh cup of morning coffee.
The road outside was quiet, rain softly falling. Directly across from them was the white promenade wall. Beyond that, the tide was high, the sea agitated, and every now and again spray would rear up, clear the wall and splash down onto the pavement. The gulls whirled in the wind, their mournful cries carrying across the crash of the waves; the small boats tied up in the bay away to their left strained against their moorings; in the far distance, on the blurred line of the horizon, a tanker laden with the finest haggis, square sausage and Irn Bru headed slowly to the south-west passage, bound for the Scottish settlements of Central America.
The smell of coffee hung in the chill morning air, itself speaking of far-off lands, with its nutty, chocolatey, spiciness. At least, that was what it had said on the back of the packet. Barney Thomson, ace international hirsutologist, enjoying it though he was, could really only taste coffee.
‘How d’you mean?’ he said after a few moments.
‘Now that Trump’s gone,’ said Keanu McPherson, Goose to Barney’s Maverick.
‘Arf,’ said Igor, deaf, mute gentleman barber’s assistant, who didn’t really have a Top Gun equivalent.
‘Perhaps,’ said Barney, ‘we can all relax, and go back to introspective silence for a few years.’
‘Really? I mean American politics is still a squabbling shitshow worth talking about, there’s the Trump impeachment trial, there’s the chaotic tragedy of the UK’s covid mismanagement, and we’ve Scottish independence to get excited about.’
Barney watched a couple of gulls wrestle over a chocolate bar wrapper, before both decided it wasn’t worth the hassle, and they flew off in separate directions, as the wrapper floated away in the wind, before finally coming to rest on the crest of a wave, far out to sea.
Years later, that chocolate bar wrapper would end up in the stomach of a blabberfish in the middle of the Pacific, that blabberfish would be caught by a hungry fisherman off the coast of the Hawaiian island of Kaho’oelvis, who would eat the fish whole, and later die from the entanglement of Snickers wrapper in his gut. All because Big Alec couldn’t be arsed crossing the road to put the wrapper in the bin.
‘I like introspective silence,’ said Barney.
‘Arf,’ said Igor, nodding.
 

* * *

 
‘You’ll be missing not having the Millport Lions of the Desert Burns supper this year,’ said Tank Montgomery, in for his monthly Uranus thundercut.
Barney continued the steady clip of scissors across the top of his head, giving him a quick glance in the mirror.
‘I don’t know, Tank,’ he said. ‘I never go to the Lions Burns supper.’
‘Wait, what? Didn’t you give the address to the lassies two year ago?’
At the window, Keanu laughed, while Igor looked up with a dubious eyebrow from the back of the shop.
‘You’re mixing me up with someone who talks in public,’ said Barney.
‘So you’ve never been to a Burns supper?’
‘Aye,’ said Barney, ‘I have been to a Burns supper. That’s how I know I don’t like them.’
Tank straightened his shoulders, and Barney chose to pause the cut, as he could see the man was beginning to get a bit agitated. Had something of a combustible reputation, Mr Tank Montgomery. His nickname didn’t come from serving in the military, it came from the time he punched a tank after getting into an argument with a guide at the Imperial War Museum in London.
He’d broken all six fingers in his right hand.
‘Is it because you hate Scotland?’
Barney gave him the look in the mirror.
‘Burns, then? You hate Burns?’
Barney continued to give him the look.
‘What’s the problem with a Burns supper then, eh?’
‘Really?’
‘Aye? Don’t go giving us any of your shite. I can get my haircut in Largs, you know. Not like they don’t know me over there.’
‘I don’t like formal dinners,’ said Barney. ‘For that matter, I don’t like informal dinners. I don’t like the bruhaha of everyone dressing up. I don’t like speeches. I don’t like people trying to be funny, when they’re clearly not funny, and I’m not that bothered when they are actually funny. I don’t like to listen to poetry. I don’t like listening to people talk in general. When there’s hubbub, I don’t like having to raise my voice to speak, and I don’t like having to concentrate through a tumult to hear what others are saying. I don’t like charity lotteries and charity auctions. Should there be dancing, I don’t like dancing. There’s literally nothing about Burns suppers that I like, Tank, and none of it’s got anything to do with Scotland, or really anything to do with Burns. Though, since you brought it up, I don’t actually like Burns anyway. If there was a Robert Louis Stevenson or Muriel Spark evening, I could go to that.’ A beat, then he added, ‘As long as there were no speeches, and no dancing. And there was no one else there.’
Tank Montgomery had looked suspiciously at Barney throughout, he slowly nodded, looked at himself in the mirror – the international sign of accepting that the haircut needed to be restarted – then he said, ‘Sounds like you hate haggis.’
 

* * *

 
Igor and Keanu were standing at the window, enjoying the slow passage of time outside, while Barney was sitting on the customers’ bench, having lifted the Daily Mail off the top of that day’s pile of uninformed, jaundiced horse manure, headline, Boris On Fire, Becomes First Ever Person To Compare Nicola Sturgeon To Krankies. With Barney having lifted the Mail, on top of the pile now sat the Daily Record, Lawwell Gives Lennon Summer 2027 Ultimatum, beneath which, nestling in raw sewage, were the Express, Hero Boris Fathers Six More Kids In Brexit Bonanza; the Sun, Massive British Tits Cure Covid; the Telegraph, Shock Biblical Find Reveals Boris Descended From Jesus; the National, Indy Scotland To Join Trading Block With Transnistria, North Korea And Julian Assange; the Mirror, Hancock Cuts To Chase, Kills OAPs With Bare Hands; and the Daily Star, Emmerdale Hunk Shagged My Mum Then Killed Her And Wore Her Skin To Asda, Claims Upset Loz.
The door opened, literally the first thing to happen in Millport in over an hour and a half. A young man in a suit, sporting immaculately groomed hair, and the kind of smile you would never tire of cutting in half with a chainsaw.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for one Barnabus Thomson.’
He looked enthusiastically around the room, assuming, curiously, that there would be some level of buy-in to his gusto.
‘Barney?’ he said, the chainsaw-deserving smile widening in the face of disinterest.
Igor put his hand up, to accompany his scowl.
‘Excellent,’ said Chainsaw Guy, though he looked a little unsure.
And then Keanu raised his hand, and Barney raised his hand, in the familiar I’m Spartacus and so’s my wife routine that they pulled whenever these kinds of shenanigans were kicking off.
‘OK, I don’t really understand,’ said Chainsaw Guy, ‘but whichever one of you is Mr Thomson, I have exciting news. Michael Gove would like you to come and work for him in London.’ Now his smile was so large it burst off his face. ‘Isn’t it amazing?’
The door opened, unexpectedly, and another young man entered the shop, similar sharp suit, similar age, this year’s hair, and for a moment Barney assumed they were together. However, from the looks they gave each other, it quickly became apparent they had been, until that moment, unaware of the other’s existence.
‘Barney Thomson?’ said This Year’s Hair.
‘Jesus,’ muttered Barney. ‘I’m Barney Thomson, what d’you want?’
‘Hey, don’t be so glum, chum,’ said This Year’s Hair. ‘I bring glad tidings.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘I have in this case,’ and he patted the folder he was holding, which was a folder rather than a case, ‘an extraordinary offer, the like of which you’ve never had in your career. We would like to take you from this humble, downtrodden, dusty old barbershop, and make you personal barber to the next First Minister of Scotland, and the first Prime Minister of an independent Scotland, Alex Salmond. You on board?’
He smiled broadly. Since he’d had the floor for fifteen uninterrupted seconds, he’d grown in confidence. Even though he’d been pretty fucking confident to begin with.
‘D’you hear that, Igor,’ said Barney. ‘He called your shop dusty.’
This Year’s Hair laughed, then he glanced at Igor and the laugh turned a little nervous.
‘Arf,’ said Igor, darkly.
‘It’s OK,’ said Barney, ‘we’ll give him another minute or two. Then you can kill him.’
‘Wait, what?’
‘We’ve still got some fava beans in the cupboard, right?’ said Keanu.
Barney couldn’t help smiling, and This Year’s Hair allowed himself to smile along.
‘That escalated quickly,’ said Chainsaw Guy, using one of the clichés of the day.
Now they looked at each other, the newcomer aware that he was at a disadvantage, and that he was not alone in his endeavours.
‘You’re not from Alex’s office, are you?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Chainsaw Guy. ‘I’m a representative from the actual government, not from whatever it is you speak for.’
‘What does Nicola want with a barbershop?’
‘I work for Michael Gove, you nonce,’ said Chainsaw Guy. ‘Now fuck off, and let the grown-ups talk.’
This Year’s Hair took a moment to adjust to this reality, then switched his annoyance to Barney. It was one thing the buffoons in Westminster pitching up here looking to make a big money barbershop signing – they’d done it before, after all – but Barney sitting here entertaining them was a much greater offence.
‘You’re actually negotiating with this clown?’ said This Year’s Hair. ‘There’s a storm coming, Mr Thomson. Choices are going to have to be made. Old alliances will be cast aside, friendships will be lost, sides will be taken, families will be riven in two. Whose side are you on?’
A moment, Barney held the gaze across the short distance of the shop, then said, ‘Sorry, what were the choices again?’
‘You can be as glib as you like, Mr Thomson,’ said This Year’s Hair, ‘but people who go along with England in this fight are already on the wrong side of history. That’s a decision only a fool would make. The real choice is who leads Scotland forward to the new age, the new dawn. That’s where the battle lines will be drawn, that’s where blood will be spilled.’
‘I’ll keep it in mind,’ said Barney. A beat, then he added, ‘Thanks for stopping by.’
‘You haven’t heard Mr Salmond’s offer?’
‘Good point,’ said Barney. ‘Tell him I’d like to be Scotland’s first ambassador to the UN in New York. We’ll need Igor to be Foreign Sec, and we’d like Keanu to be Culture Minister, and get in the Scotland squad for the Euros.’
‘Nice,’ said Keanu. ‘Can they really do that? I mean, I don’t have a professional contract. And I’m shite.’
‘You can play in place of Ollie McBurnie,’ said Chainsaw Guy, who had wrongly taken Barney’s list of demands as further evidence that Barney was on his side, ‘then even if you never score, it’ll make no material difference.’
‘Mr Salmond will not appreciate being made fun of, Mr Thomson.’
‘I wasn’t making fun of anyone,’ said Barney, ‘and would you stop with the Mr Thomson thing every sentence, you sound like a Poundshop Bond villain.’
Unable to stop himself, Igor sniggered quietly by the window, and This Year’s Hair slung him an angry look. Then, feeling unnecessarily humiliated, he turned away, stopping with his fingers on the door handle.
‘This isn’t over, Mr Thomson,’ he said. ‘Fell deeds awake, fire and slaughter! Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered. A sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!’
And with that, out the door, the blast of cold, damp air, and he was gone.
‘Wow,’ said Chainsaw Guy. ‘What was that?’
‘From Lord of the Rings, obviously,’ said Keanu, looking at him scornfully.
‘I don’t even know what that is,’ he said. ‘Anyway, thank goodness he’s gone. Now, let’s crack on before the delegation from Sleepy Joe’s office comes calling, am I right?’
‘Whatever,’ said Barney. ‘I can’t tell you how excited I am to be talking to a representative of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.’
‘Ah, very dry, Mr Thomson, I like it. However, who you are in fact speaking to is a representative of the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s widely known Boris will be resigning in the next couple of months. The door will be open, and really, there are only two people in contention. Mr Gove, and the treacherous Home Secretary. The game is afoot, the challenge has been set, and Mr Gove is intent on picking up the gauntlet. He’s the right man at the right time. Lots of bridges to be mended after the last couple of years. And as for Scotland, you don’t get much more Scottish than Michael. They love him up here.’
‘Nothing we like better than a posh twat who leaves the country, loses his accent, then comes back to tell us what to do.’
‘Exactly,’ said the Hair. ‘And that’s why he needs the best hair in the business. You start tomorrow, Mr Thomson.’
‘There’s something to be said for chutzpah,’ said Barney, ‘although to be honest the main thing is that it’s fucking annoying. Your relieved of your duty, you may return to London.’
‘So, wait, that’s a yes?’
‘Goodbye, Chainsaw Guy,’ said Barney. ‘And tell your boss he might need to do a little more polling north of the border.’
‘Chainsaw what…?’
The door opened behind him, he turned quickly, and there was Igor standing, indicating for him that it was time to leave.
And, as usual, Igor was right.
 

* * *

 
‘Pretty depressing it’s started up again,’ said Keanu, a short while later, as the men of the shop stood at the window, drinking a refreshing cup of tea, looking out at the early afternoon.
‘It’s been raining all day, son,’ said Barney.
‘Not the rain, the comedians turning up at the shop wanting you to go and cut some arsehole’s hair, so they can substitute style for substance.’
Barney drank his tea, looking out over another bleak west of Scotland afternoon. In the far distance the giant ocean linear Titanic II began to edge its way into view from behind Little Cumbrae, as it made its way slowly towards the new deep-water shipyards in Saltcoats.
‘Won’t come to anything,’ said Barney. ‘More than likely it’s just the guy who writes our sitcom ran out of ideas, or, you know, thought it would be a good idea to reintroduce that kind of storyline.’
Keanu laughed, lifted the mug to his lips, took a revitalising drink.
‘Epic,’ he said. ‘Wait, if this thing, where we cut people’s hair and stand at the window talking about stuff is just a show, maybe the guy who writes it could get something really cool to happen.’
‘Like what?’
‘Dinosaurs would be good, right?’
‘Arf,’ said Igor, nodding.
 ‘I’ll have a word,’ said Barney. ‘See what I can do.’
And once again, as the wind blew, and the waves battled angrily in the bay, the men of the shop returned to a comfortable silence.
 

* * *

 
‘What is it now, son?’ asked Old Man McGuire.
Nearing the end of the day, the lights of the shop already on, darkness falling all the more quickly because of the grim, grey light of the sky. There were two customers in for the last gasp of the day, Barney giving young Scooby McCorkindale a double undercut Kool Aid, while Keanu was giving Old Man McGuire his regular Danny McGrain ’87.
‘How’d you mean that, Mr McGuire?’ asked Keanu.
‘I read your last book, what was it called again?’
‘You mean The Mysterious Death of Carolina D’Regimentary?’
‘Aye, that was it. You’re aye talking about no’ writing any more crime novels, but the fuck d’you call that? You had a murder, you had a police guy, and you had suspects. It was practically a fucking episode of that bastard Lewis.’
Keanu smiled, as he continued about the cut, his scissors moving steadily across what little hair Old Man McGuire still had. In reality, regardless of whatever haircut he requested – from a Danny McGrain to a Ladio Gaga – all he ever got was a bit of a trim.
‘I decided to have another go at a crime novel,’ said Keanu. ‘It’s where the money is.’
‘I liked the literary erotic steam-punk wizard mash-up you did before that one,’ chipped in Scooby McCorkindale, from beneath Barney’s scissors. ‘What was that called again?’
‘The Strange Case of Mrs Cratchit’s Wand Emporium,’ said Keanu.
‘That was brilliant,’ said Scooby. ‘Any chance of a follow-up?’
‘I’ve got an idea or two, but trouble is, no one buys literary novels. Same old story.’
‘Even though you had wizards and weird, steam-driven Victorian sex toys?’
‘That’s the way it goes.’
‘The fuck d’you call it literary for then?’ asked Old Man McGuire. ‘Just say it’s porn, or it’s wizards, people’ll buy yon shite.’
‘The word literary prepares people better for what’s to come.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘There’s hardly any storyline, nothing happens, and then the book just ends without the things that hadn’t really been happening getting resolved. You see, all these genres that people read, they come with expectations. You kill someone in a crime novel, the reader expects to find out who did it. Two people fall in love in a romance novel, the reader expects them to shag, or to fall out, or one of them to die, or something. Literary novels are so much easier. You create the tension, then just go and have chips.’
‘That’s what I liked about it,’ said Scooby. ‘It had recognisable genre-type traits, but you didn’t force the narrative into an unlikely resolution. Like real life.’
‘Ha!’ barked Old Man McGuire. ‘You mean the erotic, fake steam tech, wizard novel was like real life. Fuck kind of life are you leading?’ and he squinted uncomfortably sideways at Scooby. No answer forthcoming, he turned back to Keanu. ‘Right, you, tell us what you’re writing next.’
Barney was smiling quietly to himself, the conversation happening around him, but one in which he was happy not to be involved. Igor had switched off, silently sweeping the floor at the rear of the shop, troubled by visions of mad scientists dangerously manipulating lightning.
‘I like all this stuff about the Reddit people messing with the hedge fund guys who were trying to short Gamestop, so I thought I might do something with that.’
‘I’ve got nae fucking idea what just happened in that sentence, son,’ said McGuire.
‘It’s like The Big Short, except it’s in real life.’
‘The Big Short was real life,’ said Scooby McCorkindale.
‘Good point.’
‘I’ve no’ seen it,’ said Old Man McGuire. ‘Explain it to me.’
‘It’s about shorting stock.’
‘I don’t fucking know what that is!’
Keanu stared at him in the mirror. He started to think about what shorting stock actually meant, he struggled to put it into words. He thought about the movie, and wondered if he could explain it via the medium of Christian Bale, but that didn’t help.
‘Em…’ he said.
‘Fuck me,’ said Old Man McGuire, ‘you sound like yon muppet Trump trying to explain particle physics.’
‘I kind of need Anthony Bourdain standing over a pot of fish,’ said Keanu.
‘The fuck is Anthony Bourdain?’
‘Dead now,’ chipped in Scooby.
‘Who’s dead? Trump? Thank fuck for that, guy was a prick.’
‘You explain it to him,’ said Keanu to Scooby.
‘Shorting stock?’
‘Aye.’
‘No bother,’ said Scooby. ‘So you have these cunts who think stock’s going to go down, so they borrow the stock from other cunts, then they sell the stock they’ve borrowed to different cunts, then the stock goes down, and they buy it back from the cunts they sold it to, or from some other bunch of cunts, then they give the stock back to the first cunts, and they keep the money they made. That make sense?’
‘Do us a favour, Barney, eh?’ said Old Man McGuire. ‘Stab that eejit in the back of the head. Didn’t understand a word of that.’
‘Cheeky bastard,’ said Scooby.
This is why, thought Barney, conversations are generally better off not happening at all, and he glanced forlornly over his shoulder at the space on the wall where at one time in the shop’s recent history there had been a list of proscribed topics. And he thought how marvellous it would be if they could have that list back, if it could be adhered to without any fuss and nonsense. Or perhaps they could institute a rule whereby customers were only allowed to talk on subjects on which they were certifiably an acknowledged expert.
Tough to police, thought Barney.
And then, right on cue with the mention of police in his head, the door opened, and DS Monk entered.
‘Hola!’ she said enthusiastically, mask on, entering the seat of male dominion.
Barney smiled, feeling the room brighten as it always did on Monk’s arrival.
‘Good day?’
‘Average,’ he said, with a good-natured shrug.
‘Not so bad, Mrs Thomson,’ said Keanu, who’d taken to calling DS Monk Mrs Thomson, even though she and Barney weren’t married, and she always smiled at the name.
‘Arf!’ said Igor, agreeably from the back, leaning on the broom to take in the conversation.
‘Sounds like a blinder,’ said Monk.
‘It was shite,’ said Old Man McGuire, and then he disappeared a little further inside the barber’s cape.
Monk and Barney rolled their eyes at each other, the cuts continued, Igor made the international sign of a cup of tea and everyone present perked up, as they always did. And so, as Igor walked into the back of the shop to get the kettle on and lay the last of the day’s doughnuts on a plate, the work of the shop – another regular day held safely in the hands of the finest barbershop trio this side of New York – wound its way to a close.

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.

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.
‘Maybe Sophes and I could move to Switzerland,’ said Keanu contemplatively, as he skimmed through some of the photographs in the brochure. None of the people pictured who’d emigrated seemed to be unhappy. Everywhere else in the world was awash with clean, modern cities, snow-capped mountains, glorious sandy beaches, and cheery white-toothed families, having quality family fun.
‘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.