Short Back and Sides (3 page)

12 May 2009

Customer:
I'm almost convinced there's a plausible argument to make Murphy's Law a proper,
bona fide
law of physics.

Barber:
The ‘what can go wrong will go wrong' law?

Customer:
That's the one. You know, everybody's aware of it. I've seen children quote Murphy's Law when a piece of toast falls on the floor buttered-side down.

Barber:
It's universal, all right. You should get someone to write it as an equation or formula that you could present to the science boffins.

Customer:
Now that's not a bad idea.

Barber:
If you get the Nobel Prize be sure to mention me!

13 May 2009

Customer:
Did you see the lotto is worth six million tonight?

Barber:
No, I didn't. Six million! Sure if I won that I could open my own barber shop!

14 May 2009

On the day of the first Indian manned space flight, in a bar in town an old man was served his pint by a foreigner. ‘Where'd you get him from?' the oul' lad asked the head barman. ‘Oh, he's from India.' The oul' lad sat quiet for a moment, then out of the blue he shouts out to the Indian: ‘Hey, did you know one of your lads is in a rocket on the way to the moon just now?'

It brought the house down.

15 May 2009

A waiter who worked in town told me this story while I cut his hair one day:

A young man, who intended to impress his girlfriend and propose to her, brought her to a very fancy restaurant in town. They were shown to their table, and herself was very impressed with the grandeur of the place. The waiter poured the wine as they decided what to order.

They went with the soup to start, and the waiter had been asked earlier to put a diamond ring into the girl's soup. The soup was served, and the young man was trying to keep a straight face at the thought of his true love finding a ring at the bottom of the bowl. But after taking a spoonful she suddenly had a terrifying look in her eyes and began to gasp, grabbing her throat and banging the table with her other hand. ‘Oh my God,' said her boyfriend. ‘She's choking.'

The waiter, quickly realising what had happened, ran to the table and grabbed the damsel in distress— who was now standing up—and began to administer the Heimlich manoeuvre in front of the shocked diners. Indeed, she had swallowed the ring, and it had lodged in her throat; but the waiter was able to dislodge it. She was mortified and in tears. Not in form for sitting through a meal, the two left the restaurant.

I wonder if they ever got married in the end.

16 May 2009

A woman comes into the shop . . .

Woman:
My husband is on his way in, and I want you to trim his eyebrows. They're terribly long. Don't tell him, just cut them, and please don't tell him I was in here asking, or he'll be embarrassed.

Barber:
Okay, don't worry. We can do that.

Woman:
Oh, thanks.

And she left. Over the next few minutes, about three customers came in and sat down.

Customer:
(whose hair I was cutting): You'll just have to cut everyone's eyebrows now!

Barber:
Can you imagine? They'll all be saying to themselves, ‘I'm never going back there again. They cut my eyebrows without even asking!'

17 May 2009

I was cutting a painter's hair one day when he told me that Brendan Behan had been a painter also. He told me this story:

Customer:
Behan was painting a sitting-room in a large house in Dublin. The room had a beautiful and expensive Persian rug that almost covered the entire floor. Well, Behan had been drinking the previous night and didn't feel too good, but he set up his ladder and began to paint. He was on the ladder with the pot of paint on the top step when he accidentally knocked over the pot, and it fell to the floor onto the rug, and the paint spilled out. The rug was destroyed! He knew he was in trouble now, as he heard someone approaching after hearing the noise of the pot hitting the floor. Suddenly he saw a cat, and he grabbed it and rolled it in the spill and let it go. It ran out the door, leaving a trail of paw marks in paint as it went. At the same moment there was a slight yelp from a maid who'd heard the noise. The cat had startled her, and, as she walked in and saw the mess, her jaw dropped. Behan shouted, ‘That damn cat knocked my paint over.' Behan, thanks to his quick thinking, had passed the blame on, and the owner of the house even bought him a new pair of overalls.

Barber:
That's a great story.

Customer:
Yeah, for one man he was some man!

18 May 2009

Customer:
Would you not cut women's hair?

Barber:
Why do you say that?

Customer:
Sure there must be a fortune to be made in that game. Huh? The wife went to a place in town, one of those big places, to get the foil and a cut.

Barber:
The foil?

Customer:
Ah, yeah. You know the foil they put on the hair with the colour in it?

Barber:
Oh, yeah, tinfoil highlights—very expensive.

Customer:
Expensive? I nearly passed away when she told me how much they were, and then she says the cut was extra on top of that. Jaysus, are they mad or what? The neighbour asked the missus the other day if she'd had a bad fright. She was looking funny at the wife for a minute, like there was something different about her, but she couldn't put her finger on it. ‘Are you okay, Mary?' says she. ‘You look like you had a scare.' ‘No,' says the wife. ‘God, do you know,' says the neighbour, realising what it was, ‘it's your hair, Mary—it's turned grey!' You'd want to have seen her face!

19 May 2009

I was talking to a customer one day about the new haircuts that teenagers wear and how feminine they seemed, and he began to tell me about a documentary he'd seen on television.

Customer:
I saw a programme on TV about oestrogen in the water, and it's affecting the fish. In some of the big cities you see they recycle the water over and over for drinking. Although they can get rid of almost every pollutant and bacteria, they haven't been able to get rid of the oestrogen. So it's been affecting the fish, and they're changing sex!

Barber:
I did hear about beef that's been injected with growth hormones—men can grow breasts if they eat a lot of it.

Customer:
That's exactly it. Well, I was at a wedding recently, and I went outside for a cigarette. And what did I see: the women were all over on one side smoking, and on the other side the men were all holding the babies, and straight away, you know—right then and there I thought of the fish!

20 May 2009

There was a lad who every now and again would pop his head in the door to tell us he was going next door for his prescription. Next door is an off-licence. He'd pass on the way back, waving a brown paper bag in the air for us to see. ‘I got my prescription. I'll be feeling better tomorrow.' Sometimes he'd just shout in the odds the bookies were giving that day on anything from the chance of snow to the US presidential election. One day, when he'd just given us an update on the economy (in his own very original way), and had gone on about his business, the customer in my chair announced, ‘There's one in every village!'

Everyone burst out laughing!

21 May 2009

Customer:
Do you know how to test a microwave oven to make sure the seals are working?

Barber:
No, how?

Customer:
You put a mobile phone in the oven and close the door. Don't turn the microwave on, though. Then you ring the phone in the oven, and if it rings then it's receiving a microwave signal from outside, and you know the seals are leaking!

22 May 2009

A lad from a local deli with a great sense of humour told me they had a new range of cheese in stock from Jerusalem. ‘From Jerusalem?' I asked. ‘Yeah, Cheeses of Nazareth!'

23 May 2009

I was talking to a pensioner one day about films. We discussed James Bond for a while, and he mentioned all his favourites.

Customer:
Sean Connery was the man—a real ladies' man. There was a big lad in some of the films—he had metal teeth, and he was much taller than Bond. He'd have been in the Roger Moore films. What was his name? I can't remember . . .

I could see him trying hard to recall the name, and I knew who he was talking about, so I told him.

Barber:
It was Jaws.

Customer:
Ah, no, no, that was a different film. That was about a fish.

25 May 2009

Customer:
Do you cut your family's hair?

Barber:
No, I cut hair all day, so when I go home I rarely pick up a scissors.

Customer:
Well, you know what they say: cobblers' children have no shoes.

26 May 2009

Customer:
I never liked that that Bob Monkhouse fella.

Barber:
Same here—don't like a lot of those old-school English comedians.

Customer:
After Bob Monkhouse died they showed some clips of interviews and jokes on Sky News, and he had this great joke that cracked me up. He'd said in an interview, ‘They laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now.'

27 May 2009

While I was cutting hair one day, the Oasis song ‘Wonderwall' was on the radio in the background.

Barber:
Hey, there's ‘Wonderwall' on the radio. Sounds as good as ever.

Customer:
Did you hear the Ryan Adams version of it?

Barber:
Yeah, I thought it was great.

Customer:
A friend of mine was at the Ryan Adams gig in the Olympia, and in the middle of the gig someone shouts out, ‘Play “Summer of '69”!' He wasn't impressed!

28 May 2009

While I was cutting a customer's hair one day he was telling me that he had decided it was high time he got fit. His friends, who were in the shop waiting, kept mocking his resolution to get healthy. He told me at one stage that he was going to start hiking up mountains, which resulted in everyone laughing in disbelief, and one of his friends shouted out, ‘Be serious, John, you'd get altitude sickness walking up a stairs!'

29 May 2009

Customer:
My friends and I were trapped in the airport because of the heavy snow back in February. The whole airport was shut down by the heaviest snowfall in years. We only had one week off, and we were in the airport for days. We never got away in the end. It was a disaster!

Barber:
Were you going somewhere sunny?

Customer:
No, we were going skiing!

Barber:
The irony!

31 May 2009

A customer with a very obvious black eye sat in the next barber's chair.

Barber:
What happened to your eye?

Customer:
I was walking home the other night, the night the wind was howling, and one of the Fianna Fáil election posters blew off a pole and hit me in the face!

Everyone in the shop cracked up laughing.

1 June 2009

Customer
(with wild curly hair): I'm looking to do something different. It's a real mess, isn't it?

Barber:
Well, that's putting it mildly.

Customer:
So what would you do if it was your hair?

Barber:
I'd put a match to it!

2 June 2009

Customer:
I was called out to an accident in Tallaght the other day. There was a kid riding a horse bareback, and he ran the horse at railings at the side of the road, trying to jump the rails. Well, the railings were too high for the horse, and there were spikes at the top. The horse got caught on the top of the railings!

Barber:
My God, that's terrible. Was the kid okay?

Customer:
Yeah, he was thrown clear, but the horse died. It was bleeding badly when I got there. Some corporation workmen were shovelling soil over the blood that was running out onto the road. They didn't have enough soil, and one of the men spotted a load of sand on the garden of a nearby house—they later found out it was for building a wall—and they ran over to get a few shovelfuls to throw onto the blood. There were three of them in the garden, digging their shovels in, when a window opened on the first floor. Staring out at them stood an angry woman with rollers in her hair, and she roared down to the lads below, ‘You're not burying that horse in my bleedin' garden!'