Short Back and Sides (17 page)

3 August 2010

Customer:
A lad I used to work with had three wigs of different lengths, and he'd go through them all, pretending his hair was getting longer, and when he wore the longest one for a while he'd announce he was off to the barbers to get it cut. He'd arrive back wearing the shortest one! He thought he was fooling everyone, but we all knew!

4 August 2010

Customer:
I'm a transparent-wall maintenance engineer.

Barber:
What's that?

Customer:
I clean the windows at the airport.

5 August 2010

Customer:
Looking forward to the game tonight. Juventus aren't playing in their home ground because U2 are playing there tomorrow!

Barber:
Sounds like it was a plan.

Customer:
The Irish invasion!

6 August 2010

Barber:
There are so many beauty salons closing down in the last year. They've been hit so hard in the recession.

Customer:
But Irish women don't look any less beautiful than before.

Barber:
So what are you saying? They were wasting their money?

7 August 2010

Customer:
What did Bono do to his back? He must have slept on a cheap bed or something.

Barber:
Well, he does do those high kicks on stage.

Customer:
If you ask me, that pain in his back was all in his head!

9 August 2010

Customer:
I was out walking the pier in Dún Laoghaire with my girlfriend, and the weather was great, so we asked a lad to take a picture of us, and he spent a while looking at the screen, getting the picture in focus. He took the photo and handed me back the camera, and, as my girlfriend was walking off, he quietly says to me, with a big grin on his face, ‘Your bird has a great rack!'

Barber:
No wonder he spent a while focusing the camera: he was checking her out!

10 August 2010

Customer:
Soccer will never take off in America. It's just not going to happen!

Barber:
I heard a quote in a film: ‘Americans will never embrace soccer!'

Customer:
Who said that?

Barber:
Homer Simpson in
The Simpsons Movie
!

11 August 2010

Customer:
I see a lot of people are getting the recession haircut.

Barber:
You mean a shaved head? But that's been around a long time.

Customer:
It's really big in the States now. Lots of athletes and football players are wearing it.

Barber:
Well, I can't imagine any football players feeling the pinch over there—it's just a fashion thing!

12 August 2010

Woman barber
(approaching a customer in the waiting area): You know the way you always give me a fiver tip?

Customer
(a little surprised): Yeah . . .

Woman barber:
Well, would there be any chance I could get an advance? It's just one of the girls is going out for our sandwiches, and I've no money!

13 August 2010

Customer:
I was working in a bar in the States when the World Cup was on, and the Americans just don't get soccer. I had the TV on to see the games at work, and some of the lads at the bar watched it too.

Barber:
What did they think of it?

Customer:
The game ended in a draw, and they kept asking me who won. ‘It's a draw,' I said, but they kept asking, ‘But who won?'

Barber:
They don't have games that end in a draw over there, as far as I know. They might have to change some of the rules to get it to the next level over there.

Customer:
That's what I'm afraid of!

16 August 2010

Customer:
The Donegal postman was right! The weather here is just as he said it would be.

Barber:
It's really good today. There's no-one around—must've all gone to the beach!

Customer:
You should close the shop and head out there yourself with a mirror and a chair—make yourself a fortune!

17 August 2010

Customer:
Do you know when the first toll road opened in Ireland?

Barber:
Must be the one on the M50. That's the oldest I remember.

Customer:
No, the first toll road here was the Carlow–Kilkenny road back in 1731!

18 August 2010

Customer
(a Protestant originally from the North): I moved down to Dublin in the late sixties, and back at home all my friends and neighbours were shocked.

Barber:
Why were they shocked?

Customer:
It was the biased perspective they had of life in the South. They really were horrified by the idea of me moving into a Catholic area. They were saying things like ‘Those Catholics throw their rubbish out in the front garden—babies' nappies and all.' Terrible things. It turns out they'd heard all this but had never been down South to know what the reality was. So when I'd go back up to visit they were amazed to hear that it was nothing like that. I thought it was really funny. It still makes me laugh!

Barber:
I imagine it's the same on both sides: stories played a part in keeping up the barriers. They demonised each other.

19 August 2010

Barber:
Will I trim your eyebrows? They're quite long.

Customer:
Sure why would you do that—they'll only grow back again!

20 August 2010

Customer:
I'm glad the Celtic Tiger is dead. I didn't like a lot of what was happening to people and their attitudes.

Barber:
It did get out of hand, all right, but then we were new to all that: kids in the sweet-shop.

Customer:
Well, that's a very diplomatic way of explaining it. I remember sitting outside a coffee shop, relaxing in town, having a cigarette, and a well-dressed woman walked by with a child, and she pointed to me as she went by, never catching my eye, like I wasn't there. She says to the child, ‘Look at that dirty man smoking a cigarette. That's disgusting!' I couldn't believe my ears!

Barber:
That's incredible!

21 August 2010

Customer:
Great value in hotels here at the moment—must be all these ghost hotels that NAMA are running.

Barber:
It used to be a different story: high prices and terrible service, in some places.

Customer:
I remember staying in a big hotel years ago in the west. It was packed the week we were there. I'll always remember the breakfast we were served. It was disgusting: the fried eggs were like rubber. I was saying to the wife that I'd try the scrambled egg instead, and the lad at the next table overheard me and says, ‘Don't get the scrambled egg—it's worse!' I ended up paying a fortune, and the kids were an extra eighty or hundred euro each a night. My son was four—sure he'd hardly wear the carpet!

23 August 2010

Customer:
I was so sick at the weekend. I was out on Saturday, and we were out all night drinking cocktails and shorts, and I was feeling fine—well hammered, though. And then I made a big mistake: I got a kebab on the way home—never felt so ill. I was on the couch all day yesterday, and I rang in sick today! Must have been food poisoning.

Barber:
You were drinking shorts and cocktails all night, but it was the kebab on the way home that made you sick?

24 August 2010

Customer:
A friend of mine swims every day. Regardless of the weather, he's out in the sea. He swims off the coast of Waterford, down at Helvick Head, and he was telling me recently he was swimming back to the harbour when he saw two American tourists. They get a lot of them down there—it's a beautiful spot. So he gets back to the harbour wall, just below the Yanks who were watching him, and he shouts out, ‘Is this Wales?' To which they reply, ‘No, this is Ireland.' ‘Oh, no,' he says. ‘I must have missed it!' And he kicks off the harbour and swims back out to sea, with the Americans standing there amazed!

25 August 2010

Barber:
All the lads are in getting their highlights cut out because they're going back to school. I always wonder why they're so hard on kids who have colour in their hair.

Customer
(a teacher): Well, I can tell you why. I'd have agreed with you fifteen years ago when I argued the same issue with a principal in the school I was working in. It was mostly girls who had highlights then. So I won my case, and the kids were all getting highlights, and we let it go. Then, one day, a girl came into school with bright orange hair. We had to draw the line, and she was suspended. I asked her why she had done it, and she said she wanted to be different.

Barber:
So by removing the ban you forced the rebels to the next level.

Customer:
That's exactly it!

26 August 2010

Barber
(during a conversation about faith): It's well known when there's an imminent threat to life that people turn to a higher power for help. Like a plane crash, for instance—most people will turn to prayer out loud, even.

Customer:
Not always the case, though. When I was young I was with my parents, driving through the North of Ireland on a quiet country road late at night. There were lots of trees, I remember, so we were well into the country when we turned a corner, and there were about five men in balaclavas with guns or rifles—I can't remember exactly—but we thought that was it, with our Southern-reg. plates! We had no choice but to stop, and my dad rolled down the window when one of the guys came over to the driver's window. ‘Are you Protestant or Catholic?' he asked. After a few seconds my dad says, ‘Neither—we're atheists.'

Barber:
But still, I bet he was praying it would work!

Customer:
I know
I
was. It worked, all right. We made it through—scary moment, though!

27 August 2010

Barber:
The sun is back out. It was raining just a minute ago!

Customer
(a student): I love this weather!

Barber:
Are you serious?

Customer:
Yeah, the girls see it's warm and sunny, and they come out in T-shirts, and then, when they're out walking around town, it rains, and it's like a wet T-shirt competition out there!

Barber:
There's always an upside to everything if you look hard enough!

28 August 2010

Barber:
Are you doing anything for the weekend?

Customer:
Yeah, I'm going to a party tonight with my girlfriend. We were in town all morning because she wanted to buy a dress, and she saw one in the first shop we went into but didn't get it, and she went off on a mad one, going to every shop in town, dragging me with her. Three hours later she decides to go back and get the dress she saw in the first shop!

29 August 2010

Customer:
There was nothing in the papers or the radio but talk of whether to name or disclose the addresses of anyone convicted of sex crimes. It's an important issue, but it's like when a big story breaks there's nothing else discussed.

Barber:
There was a story a customer told me about a woman in south Wales a few years ago who had her house vandalised by an anti-paedophile mob. They sprayed ‘paedo' across her front door. It turned out when the police looked into it that she was a paediatrician. Information can be a dangerous thing in the wrong hands!

Customer:
Maybe they were dyslexic!

30 August 2010

Customer:
There's a Romanian woman who sells the
Big Issue
outside the shop I work in, and she's very friendly, so over the last year we've gotten to know her. But a while ago she disappeared for weeks, and no-one knew where she was. She had told us her husband wasn't well and they were waiting for an operation for him, and we started to think the worst. Then, out of the blue, last week she was back selling outside the shop again. We asked her where she'd been, and she told us that they'd been waiting for so long for her husband's operation that she decided to book flights home for herself and her husband. They went to the hospital, arranged the operation in Romania for free, had a holiday, saw the family and came back!

Barber:
That's incredible. They could get the operation so quickly over there, and for free! What's going on over here?