Welcome to Wankerville: at last, we know where (and what) we are...

You know how you often pass a big welcoming sign when you drive into a village in the countryside? Like, "welcome to Upper Dicker, twinned with....etc..etc".  Well some kind soul of a signwriter has done the same for the area of south west London defined by the postcode, SW4.

In a none-too-subtle follow up to the helpful directions painted last year on one of Brixton High Street's rail bridges, a generous human has helped the often confused (or drunk) residents of Clapham know exactly where it is that they reside.

This bridge - which carries the Overground line trains from Clapham Junction to Highbury and beyond, as well as a lot of the Kent  commuter traffic (and formerly Eurostar trains) - is well chosen as a portal to the decidedly faded pleasure zone of Clapham High Street.

How long will this last one wonders? Will the burghers of Clapham take offence and whitewash it over asap? Maybe not. The inscription has gone down well on social media, with Clapham residents among its most fervent fans. See, for example, this post on Instagram.

As I live close to the borders of  C*****m and a neighbouring zone, I quite often lie about my own location - what a dastardly betrayal that is! But if it were to be officially re-branded, maybe I would have a bit more civic pride....OK, no, perhaps not. In fact I think there are very strong grounds for re-naming the entire city, all of Greater London, with this inelegant moniker. Grounds which I will explain in another post very soon.

Meanwhile, people leaving the OK-yaah Babylon of Clapham High Street and heading  for the relative paradise of Stockwell are also reminded of just what a lucky escape they are making.

Three cheers for another good use for spray paint!

Death by scissors: the deadly serious (that is, hilarious) business of a bloke trying to get a decent haircut in London in 2016

I have once again been reduced to a quivering knot of silent, internal laughter by one of Daniel Ruiz Tizon's podcasts.

The eponymous "Is Available" series reached episode 123 this week,  but I have been away, I am trying to catch up. The  blessing and the curse of the digital age: if you absent yourself from it, even for months, you get back and everyone tells you, you can catch up! It's so easy…listen, listen again! I, player!

Yeah it's easy, but you need to have the time. And stamina.

Unless, of course, it's something as good as what I listened to last night.

I listened to Ep.122, and was enjoying iy enormously. And then he got to the bit that was directly relevant to a personal problem. Getting a haircut. Now that my haircutter has absconded. Gone back to Cyprus to grow figs and olives, he says.

So I tune back into Daniel Ruiz Tizon is available. I find episode 122, there are 39 minutes packed with all the highly nutritional material his fans demand, are addicted to even. A cape revival. How to catch chicken pox. The worst American accents on British TV.

And then, Daniel's decision to get a haircut somewhere in Victoria. He went to a salon and had a bit of an awkward time with the stylist, Victor, who fancied himself as a scissors artist. One of those haircutters who had long ago eschewed the electric clippers. Yes, that's him. Victor, of Victoria.

All of which was difficult listening for me. The agony of this experience was just too excruciatingly real and too horribly familiar.

If you listen to this on Daniel's latest platform, Acast, you can see some related images  - such as a sketch of the strange arc this stylist had somehow created in the hair on the back of the author's head.

For the past 10 years I'd been lucky: I had found Andy in Landor Road, and he knew exactly what all his customers wanted and gave it to them, no fuss. With Andy you could ask for all sorts of fancy hairdos but he'd probably give you the one you needed.

After a lifetime of the sort of embarrassment so beautifully described in this podcast, it was a massive relief for me to find a barber who didn't make want to dissolve into a fluid and disappear into the drains as soon as I left the shop.

Does anyone else have this hang-up? The knowledge that, about once a month for about three decades of your adult life, you'd been pressing lots of money and even handsome tips into the hands of people who have just made you look even worse than you looked when you went into the shop?

Who made you wish you had a big paper bag to pull over your head as soon as you left the shop?

Who ensured that instead of returning to work you went straight home and started hacking away at  the "style" with blunt scissors, and then started applying conditoner, Flora, Trex, Brylcreem, bleach, something your auntie gave you for Christmas in 1974 and you'd never used, whatever you could find to try, to please god allow you to change that horrible 1983-look fluffed up thatch some crazy iD-reading harem-pant wearing new romantic had just inflicted on your stupid transplanted bum fluff.

Well, I had a 10 year holiday from all that. But now Andy's gone, I'll have to get used to it again. I'm a month overdue on the haircut. Next week I'm going south to Garratt Lane in Tooting on a quest. The last thing Andy told me was that I should go to a hairdressers there called something like Goodfellas, where I should find young George,  the apprentice he was training for most of a year before he retired.

I will try to find him, or will at least make a discreet reconnoitre of the area. Maybe he'll remember how Andy trained him on my bumpy scalp.

But how will I ensure I get him, and not just the next available stylist?

Hell!

Landor Road barber-shop saga pt 3: Great news - Andy's back! Not such great news - it's only for three months…he says

So, cycling down Landor Road on the way to Brixton, going that way round specifically to see what the latest developments are with my one and only favourite barbers, Andy's, I get a pleasant surprise.

Sure enough, the old shop is now completely transformed. It's called Sapphires, and it's going to be a beauty parlour, basically -  facials, wakings, nails, massage, etc, etc. They've built a counter facing the door, and there are marble look tiles all over the walls and smart new smoked-glass mirrors.

All of which I hardly notice as the guy sitting on the chair nearest the window is none other than Andy.

I cycle past, then do a double take. A u-turn to double-check. It is Andy, he's on the phone. I assume he's there just to give some advice or whatever to the new tenants. I decide to stick my head round the door to wish him well.

I do this and he says, "Hi, come on in. I can do you now!"

Before I know it I'm in the chair and the clippers are buzzing through my six-week haystack of greying hair.

So, he's back from a cruise around the Med. He's got an arrangement with the girls running the new nail bar-cum massage parlour. He can keep on barbering here until he really, finally retires - in January. Well we've heard that one before, but something tells me this time he's really serious.  He's booking a container to take furniture and the Merc back to Cyprus.

Clumps of my hair fall onto the grey marble look tiles. Andy's kit of clippers, scissors, etc is perched rather precariously on a small washbasin. There are massive mirrors. It's all a bit surreal. But he works away, I feel that huge sense of liberation I get every time I have a good haircut.

After a while another of his old customers looks in. Word is getting round, after all the confusion, Andy's note on the window about being back in September turns out to have been true. A bit later than advertised.

We can all breathe again, just for a while. Andy says he hopes that they'll bring in another barber to continue the service even after he's gone.

Well, all we can do is wait, and see.

Andy's barbershop on Landor Road - did I write too soon? I hope so, but the plot thickens...

It used to be Andy's on Landor Road – the best barbershop in all the SW London postcodes, in my admittedly prejudiced opinion. But now what's going on?

Having written about the closure of my favourite barbershop a few days ago, I went  back today just to get a couple of photos before the place was ripped apart or whatever. Instead what I get is a new burst of hope that maybe Andy's of Landor Road, SW9,  not closing after all….but then again, maybe he is.


As you can see from the top photo, the windows are covered over with newspaper on the inside. It looks more like re-decoration than demolition or a total refurb.

But - in the main sign above the shop, Andy's name has been whitewashed out, as though there's a new owner who can't bothered to get a whole new sign made, and is just going to put their name there.

Then I look closer and see one of Andy's handwritten messages, a bit scrunched up, sellotaped to the window. But it's still legible: "Gone on holiday, back on 2nd September".

So, I was wrong, it seems - he's just having the shop nicely tarted up while he's back in Cyprus, a fresh coat of paint etc, to help with the eventual sale? I feel relieved and foolish all at once. What if he'd read my last entry?

Then I see two other things that make me worried again. When you look hard at the sign above the window, you can just make out the word "Andys" painted over, while"Barbers" has been left as it was.

Then  I notice two further small notes in the window - these are drawn in pencil, and one at least appears to show some sort of shield with some words in what might be an eastern European language…or might just be the name of a football club or something. There's also the date 1908 in the bottom left quarter of the shield - maybe the year this team started or won some big cup?

I begin to wonder if he's sold the place to a Polish barber, or maybe that young apprentice is taking it over? If anyone knows what these mean, please let me know here, it's fascinating.

It's all a mystery, but I am hoping to see Andy on September 2 when I will give him a full apology (and a better than usual tip)!

Has he really gone this time? One of the last of south-west London's old-style barbers seems to have shut up shop

Cycling along Landor Road towards Brixton, I see what I have dreading for years. I see that the best barber's shop in south London has finally closed, and I am so sad. I swear I will never have a haircut again.

For about the last three years Andy has been threatening to retire, and then always staying on another few months….but now it seems the era of Andy's in Landor Road is actually finished.

UPDATE: I AM HOPING THIS STORY WAS WRONG, OR PREMATURE AT LEAST - READ NEW STORY HERE!

What follows is a blog entry I wrote six months ago, expecting the shop to close that week:


 Get an education with your haircut in Landor Road

It's going to be another ending of another era, and this one is taking its time. Andy is the best mens' haird-cutter in south London, bar none. His little shop on Landor Road, halfway between Brixton and Clapham North, is one of those bright lights on any map of London's true centres of community.

Here for the last 30 years or so Andy has been cutting the hair of locals of all races, all ages, all conditions - although, by virtue of his trade, the vast majority of his customers are male. I started going there around ten years ago when my then favourite, Chris and Tony's in Northcote Road - closed down as yuppification swept up that street like wildfire.

Now people wil be paying five times as much to get their hair cut in  fake "retro" surroundings.

There was nothing fake and everything genuinely and blessedly retro about Andy's and Chris And Tony's - just the names tell you a bit.

Anyway, as for Andy, he's now 67  and for the past two or three years has been planning to retire. In fact he should have retired four or five times over the past few months, but each time something seems to happen to the process of handing over the lease to his business. It's all much too complicated to go into here, but he always tells me about his place in Cyprus, the olive groves and vegetable plots, the grapes and other fruit, and then about his London allotment somewhere near Crystal Palace.

It seems there's always a story to every visit to Andy's. Some days it's just like a soap opera: a guy comes in with information on where to buy new wing mirrors for Andy's 1980s Merc, and a lengthy and heated discussion ensues, ending with Andy handing over a wad of cash to this guy.

Sometimes itinerant hairdressers wander in and ask if there's any work going. One guy who came in a few months back, a Kurd, he said, was particularly insistent. His English was  not  perfect but he said he had plenty of experience and had worked for many barbers around London.

"How many years?" Asks Andy.

"One year"

"Come back in five years", says Andy, adding, "It takes ten in all but I'll train you for the  last five."

The Kurd looks crestfallen and again asks for work, and Andy then  hands him the scissors, points to the thinning hair on my scalp, and says, "Show me what you can do".

The nice young Kurd goes at my horrible  greying hair with vigour. Almost immediately, Andy stops him.

"Not like that, no, you have to learn, it takes time". He then gives him the names and phone numbers of a couple of other local hairdressers who might employ him, and he's on his way.

Today, I go to Andy's for the first time in much too long. I always expect to see the shop shut and boarded up, but it's open and busy. And for the first time since I've been going there's a second hairdresser.

"My apprentice will start you off, number 3 on the sides, number 2 to set the line….if that's ok."

He gets to the work with the clippers. Almost immediately Andy stops him, takes the clippers, and shows him how it should be done - "Look, like this, rising through the hair as you go up, like a plane taking off, up, lift, lift!"

He tries again, and again Andy stops him. Then he holds his wrist and helps him lift the buzzing clippers at just the right angle.

"It should be natural, it will come to you in time, but only with lots of practice. I took me a year or two to get that right".

The next time I go, the young Kurd greets me, seats me, and sets to work with full confidence.  He even begins chatting, just like Andy did, the usual stuff.

The shop is full of very talkative men, one  guy, maybe 60ish, with quite a posh voice, is trying to explain the theories of James Frazer's The Golden Bough, which he says he has just read. The guy is wearing a long black leather coat which looks a bit too big on him. But he's articulate, talking faster and louder.

At first he and Andy were joking , but soon Andy just goes quiet and lets this guy carry on with what is becoming a rant. I realise he's probably one of the many regular customers Andy has who are having treatment at the hospital over the road. I've seen some men in here more or less in their hospital pyjamas.

Quite a few of Andy's customers seems to get their hair done for a big discount, or for goods in kind. There's a guy who helps keep Andy's ageing Mercedes on the road, another who cleans his windows. Sometimes people have only a couple of quid on them, and Andy lets them off - perhaps til next time - the other six quid. Yes, the standard charge, this year went up to an outrageous £8. Cost of living.
This is one of London's best men's hairdresser, in zone 2. A barber's shop in London SW9, in 2015, a perfect haircut  for the price of two coffees and a bun.

That was written early this year - and now he really has  gone. 

Well, no, it did still shock me to see the shop locked and with for rent signs in the windows. It seems the owners wants to rent it to another hairdressers, but you can be sure it will a very different sort of place.
That generation of Greek and Turkish and Italian hairdressers who came to England, many of them in the 1950s and 60s, is dying out.

Last time I went there Andy said he might still work for a bit in another shop, owned by a relative, in Tooting. I must go there - because there's no-one else in this city who I'd trust to cut my hair. I will report back. 

UPDATE: MAYBE ANDY'S IS NOT FINISHED AFTER ALL - CHECK OUT LATEST POSTING!!

Clapham comes up smelling of Bread and Roses (sort of)

Having consistently slagged off my own neighbourhood in this blog, I decided - over a lovely £3 pint of Guinness at the Bread & Roses pub in Clapham Manor Street - that in all fairness I should praise the good aspects of this fair borough.

Poetry guaranteed to lift the spirits even after
the grimmest Northern Line commute
 -  thanks to the cultured staff of Clapham North tube station

There's the first and one of the best things about the SW4 area - this pub is just as good as it ever was, and by that I mean it feels to me just the same as it did in 2004. In fact, not even the prices seem to have changed much, and while the street it is in has undoubtedly seen a five-fold increase in house-prices, the local people seems just as mixed-up and crazy and strange as ever they did.

With all the high-visibility gentrification and ruggerisation of this area, of yummy-mummification of
twixt-commons nappy zone, the banker-wankers of old-town, and boot club anti-tummification of the common itself, you can be forgiven for forgetting that Clapham is still a deeply diverse place, it still has a great clump of deep roots, as deep as the deep shelters at Clapham South where the first post-war West Indian migrant workers were supposed to sleep.

Lots of good reasons to like the place, starting as soon as you exit the Northern Line at Clapham North and read their daily quote chalked up on a board as you head for the ticket barrier.

Whoever chooses these has some genius, setting you in a frame of mind to appreciate the true spirit of this once radical borough. Remember this is where the Clapham Sect met to push through the biggest humanitarian reform in British history - abolition of the slave trade.

Hard to imagine it now beneath the onslaught of Range Rovers and yummy mummies and chaps in rugger-shirts, this place til quite recently was favoured by the left-leaning, the bohemians. Hence the HQ of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in Clapham High Street, the trade union HQs in Old Town, the former squats in Rectory Grove.

All going or gone, now, but before it all disappears completely, do something!