Pav’s Patch, by Mike Pavasovic

EVERY so often something strikes me as having changed.

All at once, and for no apparent reason, I realise that something is very different to the way it used to be.

Take haircuts. Sitting in the chair the other day at the hairdresser’s — I still prefer the word barber — I looked around at all the lotions, potions, mirrors and driers and suddenly found myself thinking back to the one-man shops I knew as a boy.

Where I lived everyone went to a man known only as The Pole — quite apt for a barber, don’t you think? He was a lovely man and would always ask you how you wanted your hair.

Which was a bit pointless because he only knew one cut.

All boys received the same short back and sides which he always finished off by dipping his metal comb into a jar of Brylcreem and putting your hair into a parting.

You left — always with your duffel coat hood up — then dreaded school the following day and the obligatory pow slap.

For the uninitiated, let me explain that this was supposed to be a light tap on the back of the neck, but at school — particularly senior school — people would slap like an angry woman.

When I was a third year (Year 9?), a singularly unpopular boy arrived looking like the shorn lamb and was set upon before an English lesson.

When the English teacher arrived, who was actually Irish, he saw the sobbing lad and asked my friend Brian what had happened.

Brian, in broad Dukinfield tones, replied: “I reckon as ’ow he’s been pow slapped.” He then had to explain what a pow slap was to the gentleman from Co Clare.

I can still remember the teacher walking to the front and saying: “I want all the boys who have, er, pow slapped Bloggs to come out.”

He was surprised to see at least a dozen lads get up but proceeded to berate them, comparing them with baboons, apes and other primates.

Some time later I decided I’d had enough of being ridiculed over haircuts and simply resolved not to have mine cut.

Trouble is, my hair doesn’t grow downwards so much as outwards. Within a couple of months I had a huge rat’s nest on my head, well before Russell Brand.

This eventually appalled the headmaster who grabbed a handful and ordered me to get it cut.

Speaking of pow slaps, do you remember having your hair pulled at birthdays? I was so glad mine always fell during the Easter holidays.     

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