Feeling fine and Florentine

“The Tuscan Frying Pan,” Florence was earning its title that day, certified in sweat dripping down the backs and sides of tourists squinting in the Piazza della Signoria, and my hair felt, again, like one of those Russian fur hats. Time for a haircut. And wouldn’t you know it, Florence is the home of my favorite barber.

I went straight for the small shop, undistracted by the Basilica di San Lorenzo where one of my favorite Italians holds wishes on his tomb, not stopping at the old friend of a hotel (taken by a different Rick Steves group, the lucky buggers), and swerving around the periodic bulges of visitors whose shoulders relaxed bit by bit with every lick of their slowly melting gelato. Visciola e fragola? Va bene.

Old Town Florence is a tourism city for sure, and the crowds used to irritate me, but working as a guide has helped me see the ways they’re doing it right (improved traffic laws, cleaning the duomo, and coordinating the many marvelous sites) and given me an increased appreciation of the place and its importance in our collective past. So now they’re not the addled brains of people in my way, they’re international minds growing in appreciation and understanding of the birthplace of the Renaissance rebirth.

But yes, at the moment, I wanted them to move. I needed that haircut. Kindly get the inferno out of my way, signore. Before I get Borgia on your ass.

I made it. The slightly cooler confines of a barbieri who’s been cutting hair here since the 1970s and his colleague with a coif like Grace Jones on an ambitious day. They greeted me with their usual dignified and affable buon giorno.

Scissors snipped, buzzer buzzed, and when the razor had scraped the edges clean I felt like a renewed man, renaissance of the scalp. ready to stand on a pedestal if I must, sling in hand, and face the future with concentration and confidence and just a hint of gel.

Back into that Tuscan sun of fame and infamy, punishing and beautiful, try to escape it but don’t forget you traveled here to see it. Down the canyons of Medici streets, past Strozzi home and Brunelleschi dome, a little slower now, a bit more strut, something lyrical in between the paces. Feeling a tad more Italian.

Florence is a pilgrimage, and I wanted to pay homage to the great ones. Architects, poets, and the family of men who led nations, and they’re just the audience for the names we know. Galileo, Ghiberti, Machiavelli, and Dante, men whose deeds echo and dance and scheme and enlighten down through the centuries.

Then over to stand in front of the tomb of perhaps the greatest artist in human history. It was just me, the cooler air, dust motes painted by stained glass light slanting down through basilica space, and the tomb of Michelangelo Buonarotti.

He looked good. I looked good. Florence looked good. Travel, now that is good. Buon viaggio a tutti.

Globalization for your head, from Cuba to Cambodia

Can you think of a better movie for the barbershop TVs than Edward Scissorhands? I couldn’t, but then again, in the heat of Santiago de Cuba, and with the gummybear feeling in my bones after two days of food poisoning, I wasn’t up to much in the way of active thought. I was just happy to sit in the classic chrome barbershop chair and let the dude chop off the hair that had been holding in heat like a hammam for my noggin.

Lydia was more reluctant. “You can’t get your hair cut in Cuba!” she had initially prohibited. She’d enjoyed the story of my previous Cuban barbershop visit, but didn’t love the cut itself. “He gave you The Haircut!”

When she met me, I was fresh off a The Haircut in Malaysia, and it was sufficient, as were later iterations from Peru and Venezuela, but her standards had been raised in a teeming and clattering market in Phnom Penh.

This lady was on to something, mid-afternoon in Phnom Penh

It was Day One in Cambodia, we had been up since the jetlaggy hour of 4:00 AM, and sweat was rapidly soaking through my store of T-shirts. We were hiding from the sun and seeking the Cambodian in one of the labyrinthine markets that crop up like callicks throughout the developing world. They are sometimes a good place to buy items, usually a good place to buy food, and always a good place to be among the locals living their normal lives. I’ve slurped soup and sampled sandals in these markets, but I couldn’t remember ever getting a haircut in one.

Not a lot of English here

One of the ways you can tell whether a market is for tourists or locals is if anyone speaks English. In this bustling corner of snapping scissors and dripping dye, no one spoke a word. Good for authenticity, bad for communication. In short, it was exactly the sort of place where I always get The Haircut, inevitable when your request is articulated in fingers held close together while pointing to the sides, then a little farther apart when pointing to the top.

I don’t mind The Haircut. I do mind Feeling Like My Head Is A Long-Burned Candle. So I took a seat, pointed, measured, and sat still for the scissors. He cut. He tilted. He bobbed and weaved. Floated like a butterfly and snipped like a….barber. Flat razor for the neck hair, always appreciated, then he was done. In the Mekong-hazed mirror I saw...a slightly different haircut!

Somehow we'd gotten to be friends, with all our smiling
and faltering attempts at communication

It had a little spiky zone towards the front! Variety! Nice! Lydia, with her more assessing eye, informed me that the whole thing was more shaped and well done. That’s extra bonus; the only criterion for me was shorter.

So in the Cuban chair, watching Johnny Depp produce topiary, and feeling hair tickle my ears on its way to the floor, I was already satisfied. When I presented the finished product to Lydia she squinted for a moment. “He cut everything the same amount shorter...so he basically returned you to the same cut you got in Cambodia, minus the front flip flair thingy. I like it.”

It was a Cambo-Cuban haircut, multicultural coiffure, globalization for the cabeza, but I was just happy to let the heat stream up less impeded.

Puppy's Barbershop, Cuba

“Puppy's Barbershop:You're ugly when you arrive, but you're handsome when you leave.”

My eyes wandered from the handmade sign, past photos of a younger Puppy, along the fuchsia bicycle with a handmade child seat on the crossbar, to the 1950s barber's chair where a young macho was having his coif maintained by the patient Puppy of signage fame.

Their conversation was relaxed, familiar, and so lightning-fast that much of it went right over my head, which was covered with an amount of hair that had felt fine in San Francisco, but in Cuba felt like one of those big Russian fur caps, which just don’t do well in the tropics. There’s a reason it was the Cuban Missile Crisis, and not the Cuban Giant Hair-Hat Crisis.

Next to me sat a sinewy older man in no particular hurry, occasionally chipping a word or three into the conversation, but other than that, just relaxing like thin Buddha in a guayabera. I felt at home among these men, and asked them a question that had been on my mind.

“Would you guys like a McDonald’s here in Trinidad?” I was half-expecting, or perhaps hoping, for a revolutionary rebuttal against capitalist corporations, perhaps a discourse on neo-liberalism’s inherrent destruction of the principles of solidarity, which are so crucial in Cuba. But their answer was far more beautiful than that. Beautiful, and terrifying.

“McDonald's? What is that?”

How does one explain McDonald’s? “It's a hamburger restaurant chain...” was weak, but it's what came out while I tried to translate what else I wanted to say about it.

“Of course! We love hamburgers! And they're really good with pork.” Cubans love their pork, and do it better than any nation I've yet tasted, though I’m not sure Ronald would approve. The conversation moved on to various pork recipes, leaving my mind to wonder how I could have explained the golden arches better.

Because someone needs to.

Cubans, protected for fifty years by an embargo they love to hate, are shockingly innocent of the dangers of globalized commerce. They are not aware that GDP does not equal wealth and prosperity for the people, and if there's one thing Cubans are remarkably good at (in addition to baseball, cooking, music, art, dancing, laughing, storytelling, relaxing, and looking cool) it's caring about The People.

There is a sense of solidarity on the island that is unlike anything I have ever seen. So of course, Cubans hear that these giant multinational companies want to come in, and they think “It will bring in a lot of money, and therefore be good for Cuba.”

I fear for the day Ronald starts selling his burgers alongside the paladares of Havana, and can only trust that the Cuban people, or at least their leaders, will know the danger before it is too late. Or, failing that, that they’ll remember what good food tastes like.

Maybe it was the steps already taken to protect this island sanctuary, or their impressive adaptability and resilience, or maybe it was just the languorous pleasure of an afternoon in the barbershop, but as Puppy finished removing my sweltering hairstack, I felt a calm optimism.

In fact, maybe Cuba will teach Ronald a thing or two. Maybe he'll arrive looking ugly...

How long until that grows out?

I got The Haircut again.

The ancient barber chair in Nyaung Shwe

In Nicaragua, Morocco, and Myanmar I liked it, described it as “Much lighter, now I won’t sweat so much” and “my tiny shampoo bottle will last longer.” Here, it’s more “I am applying for the job of Faceless Peon in the soulless depths of your accounting corporation” and “you can call me Penis Head.”

Maybe my standards are just too high now. After all, in those places, I was just happy I could describe The Haircut without a shared language: point at the sides and back of the head while making buzzing noises, point at the top and hold thumb and forefinger an inch apart, and any peluquero or barberji will know what you mean. Gracias, shokran, and chezu tinbade.

Whereas here, I got demanding. “Can you leave the top long, and just thin out or trim the sides and back so it’s not so shaggy?” We differed in our interpretations of that request, the hair butcher and I. I was thinking “dignified, adult, but still warm for winter.” She was chuckling “White boy gonna look like one big boring peepee.”

The bridge in Frankfurt, where I spent an inordinate
amount of time listening to Elliot Smith

Was it my imagination that people on BART were less friendly after my cranial misdecoration? No one wanting to talk to the guy with the dickhead haircut? Or was it a vibrational consequence of an afternoon reading journals from my first awkward days abroad? Either way, I felt sweaty when I got off the train.

But riding home was restorative, as always. The music in my ears was still perfect, my friend the night heron was perched in hunch-shouldered brooding on his normal set of buoys in Lake Merritt, and the night air felt perfect on my naked neck, dumbass hairchop or not.

And it made me realize one other thing. One other priority. One you can perhaps help me with:

Anybody know a Halloween costume I could pull off, one that includes a hat of some sort?

I don't know who he is, but I like his style. (Thank you, google image search.)

No assassination attempts here, I'll take a desk job instead?

My cut in Myanmar was the only one
I took pictures in.

I'm rumbling along, too vaguely happy and scatterbrained to have much on my mind to share, unless I go a little further up and get all literal on you.

It's only been two months since the stern woman in Thailand mowed my head-lawn, but I was eager to try a haircut beyond the usual: make buzzing sounds while pointing at the sides and back, then point at the top and hold fingers an inch apart.

I took a seat in a real-deal modern hairdresser's chair, hardwood floors under orange and green-accented walls, and Bobbi asked what I wanted. Oh. Um. If not The Usual Haircut, then what? “You don't even know, you gonna leave it up to me,” he said.

Bobbi reminded me of another cool cat who had cut my hair so that was fine by me. 

The other two chairs held women whose conversations revealed long-term relationships with their hairdressers. They talked about how the vacation to Mexico went, husbands, and a misadventure with some paint. I tried to chat with Bobbi, and told him about the chiropractic work that comes with a cut in Nepal, but soon enough the pseudo-massage of getting my hair cut lulled me into silence.

Now that was a chair.

The hypercolor zebra-print pants of one of the other stylists sent me on a psychedelic trip that ended when another guy came in and asked when Bobbi would be ready for his next customer. “In about 45 seconds, soon as I get Mr. Tim ready for his engagement.”

But there was one other thing. “I have a pet peeve against ear hair,” Bobbi confided, as he jammed the buzzer into my flappers, “It's just a part of gettin' older, we start gettin' hair places we never expected to. I understand.” I admitted that I appreciated the help, it's getting jungly in there in my old age.

Then we were done and he held up the mirror so I could see. To be honest I was looking for something a little more...exciting; I kind of feel like I'm applying for an office job; but I guess that's today's lesson, if you're going to have preferences, you have to figure out what they are, even if you are scatterbrained and happy.

Istanbul makes a man out of me

It was K who noticed the barber shop. “Did you want a haircut?”

My head felt like a chia pet left untended somewhere with plenty of water and sunlight, and it was speeding through my supply of tiny bottles of hotel shampoo. I would have gotten it cut in Belgium, but I suspected a Turkish haircut might be interesting.

Good call.

A not-tall man with short gray hair was reading the paper when I opened the door, and gestured me to a seat. He spoke no English, and I can only say “thank you” in Turkish, but my gestures and shoulder shrug of “something like that” were met with a nod of understanding.

He started with the buzzer, which seemed to have a hard time with my long hair. One spot in particular was giving him trouble, and he went over it again and again, slowly, until I looked in the mirror and saw he was watching the TV in the corner, where overly emotive sighs and gasps sounded like an adult movie.

We see you watching TV, Mr. Barber Man

It wasn't the first time a barber has gotten sucked into a soap opera while cutting my hair, but as long as he wasn't holding anything sharp, I didn't mind.

After the buzzer came the scissors, and soon I felt ready to go. But we weren't done.

He asked something in Turkish, and I agreed. Why not? He pulled me forward and pushed my head into the sink, and I retroactively heard the word “shampoo” in his question. Shampoo what is 97% buzzcut? Oh well.

It was the first time someone else has washed my hair since Jennifer, the Elizabeth Shue lookalike who was the object of one of my 6,000 Middle School crushes. It was kind of nice, actually.

Another old Turkish man had come in by the time the barber was toweling my head dry, and for some reason, there under the towel, I got the giggles. I tried to stifle it before either man noticed, or the concealing towel was removed.

“Why is he giggling?”

“I don't know. I do nothing. I just wash his hair.”

“Foreigners are very strange people.”

Thanks to K for the photos in the mirror

Luckily I was composed in time, because we still weren't done. Next was a warm-foam shave with one of those little brushes and a straight razor. A friend once recommended I have this done in New York, saying it would make me feel like a million bucks. I should have taken his advice. There is something relaxing in a uniquely manly way about having another man scrape your face and throat with a razor blade.

We still weren't done. Next: aftershave. The kid in Home Alone was overreacting, but I see his point.

Still not done. A cotton swab swished around in my ear, then out came the cigarette lighter. I have the fuzzy ears of an 80 year old man, but Turkish Barber was going to help me. With artistic brushes of flame, he singed those bad boys right off.

Almost done. Just a few puffs of cologne across my chest, and I was ready, emerging onto the Istanbul street a new man.

Or at least smelling like one.

Teşekür ederim, Mr Barber Man.

That cat just gave me a haircut.

I've heard your hair and fingernails grow faster in warm climates. I haven't done the formal science, but I may go as Wolverine for Halloween this year. (I know, Freddie Kruger would be more appropriate, but I don't look good in stripes.)

My hair is not far behind, so it was time for haircut country #11 today. Curacao.

I'd heard there was a place in the "Zuikertuin" mall, which means Sugar Garden in Antillean Dutch. There's neither sugar nor a garden there, but a colony of European brands and air that smells like the inside of the new computer box, a shoe store, preservatives, consumerism. Is this what a sweatshop in Shenzhen smells like?

I generally prefer funky places, like plywood boxes and psychotic barbers, but this was definitely a salon. But hey, why not, it's another experience.

I went inside and asked in awkward Dutch if I could get a haircut, but they were all booked up.

We went outside and spotted a second salon across the way. What luck!

I went inside and asked in awkward Spanish if I could get a haircut, but they were all booked up.

I decided to go to a barbershop I'd seen next to the road, but on the other side of the parking lot was a third salon.

I went inside and asked in awkward English if I could get a haircut...but they were all booked up.

I was thinking about my potential reception in the very "local" barbershop during Curacao's presently tense political climate, when I saw a fourth place next to the exit, a barbershop. Chipped paint. Aftershave. Manly.

I approached and asked in awkward sign language if I could get a haircut...and the distinguished elderly gentleman sitting outside nodded his assent. It was perfect! It was a "local" place, the default language was the Creole Papiamentu, but in a part of town were foreigners were common. Not too salon-elegant, but I wasn't worried about hepatitis.

Inside were four antique barbershop chairs, and K's eyes widened, her hand reflexively grasping towards where her camera should have been.

On the little shelf was a faded can of Old Spice, a straight razor, and a horsehair brush. On a naturally "distressed" end table were a couple sun-faded magazines that probably went out of publication years ago. A radio in the corner was playing slow jazz, which was oh-so-perfect.

The place was styling, but the centerpiece was the barber. He was my paradigm of a jazz musician, or maybe bolero, and as he picked up the buzzer I wondered, "do I recognize this guy from the cover of the Buena Vista Social Club?" (I didn't take my camera, so here's a picture of a car I love on the island with a similar vibe.)

He had low rectangular glasses, close cropped hair, one gold ring with a flat round top, and was effortlessly the coolest cat I have ever met. Cutting my hair.

As he worked I tried to figure out what instrument he plays. Drums? Too sweaty. Saxophone? Too...lungy. Piano? Yes. Those fingers snipping at my sideburns should be tinkling the ivories.

We didn't talk. I was afraid if I started I would mention Thelonious Monk, or ask for his autograph. A nameplate on the shelf said his name was Wilbert M. J...a. If I ever see an album for sale with that name, I'll buy it in an instant.

Welcome to the Man Shack.

With the Ecuadoran sun overhead I wear my hat every day, and the Hat Hair was just getting too painful (for K) to look at, so it was time to get another haircut.

Ecuador was Haircut Country #10, which is pretty cool. I do so like them round numbers. The decathlon of man-tenance was completed in a 6 foot cube made of weathered boards whose blue paint was submitting to the elements at a graceful yet relentless pace. It looked like a storage shed you'd find in a train yard. Or the little box my old public high school used to store the hurdles in (after they stopped letting kids use them for fear they'd get hurt) that we walked past for three years without noticing until the door fell off during my senior year.

There she is, all closed up for the day.

It sat in dignified solitude on a dusty lot opposite the market. I found it yesterday, but couldn't get a haircut because the entire town's power was out. Again. The older gentleman barber looked up at me through his bifocals and shrugged. "Come back tomorrow."

So this morning, while the power was still on, I walked over, waiting outside while he finished shaving the jowly neck of a septagenarian who looked a bit like a Latin Ernest Hemingway. The gentleman barber himself had the calm eyes of a man who knows his trade and has known it for decades, watching the world outside his wooden cube change a little each year. When I asked his name he presented himself with dignity and formality, extending his hand with a smile at making my aquaintance. His name was Francisco de la Piedra.

I took a seat in the creaking wooden chair with black leather cushions just lightly cracking in the heat, ready to give the customary terse description, "short on the sides and back and a little longer on top." I always suspect I could just say "generic male haircut" and get the same, and today I was right. Don Francisco didn't ask, just picked up the buzzer and ran it into the hair on the back of my head.

Where it jammed.

Not sure if it's my hair itself, or the abuse of sun and salt it's been receiving, but my hair was too thick for his veteran tools. He adapted, coming at my apparently overwhelming head of hair in little swipes, a fighter plane reluctant to fully engage the enemy, sweeping off small pieces each time, though the motor would labor and quaver even still.

I sat watching the market across the street, where a stout fellow in a dirty apron carried a massive fish over and dumped it on his table with a thump and a grin. (The fish did the thumping, he did the grinning.)

Soon I felt the wind on my neck in that beautiful haircut freshness, and it was time for the scissors. The buzzer had barely handled my hair, and the scissors graduated in the same class, but Don Francisco managed. Of course, this being a Man Shed, he didn't dilly-dally around with any pampering frills like water, and the antique shears did a fair amount of pulling in addition to cutting, but the hair kept falling to the floor as he worked his way up to the top of my head.

I have long since come to terms with my British Hobbit heritage, complete with hairy feet and "modest" height, but in parts of Latin America my 5'8" gets me straight onto the basketball team. This was one of those times. The wooden chair scoffed at new-fangled upstarts that rise and lower, but I got the feeling Don Francisco was kind of approximating where the top of my head was as he reached his arms up over my seated form, scissors crunching.

In the market across the way an old woman sold a young boy a massive bunch of bananas, still on the stalk, which he hefted onto his narrow shoulder and walked away, though I don't know how he could see, much less walk under the burden.

Then it was time to tidy up the edges. I negotiated the line between relaxation and nervousness as he came at me with the straight razor held in hands that themselves seemed to be negotiating the line between assurance and trembling. I remembered Don Francisco shaving the jowls ahead of me and relaxed. Not much I could do about it anyway.

But he was flawless, and soon I was walking through the market with that feeling of invincible beauty that comes with a fresh haircut. I am sure all the market vendors watched me pass, the women with lust and the men with envy. I could hear my own theme music matching my steps as I strutted through the chaos. Women shoppers stood with plastic bags hanging forgotten from their wrists as they gazed at my passing beauty, and the young men wanted to do things to make me like them, wondering where I got that killer 'do.

Hat Hair decimated, cooler noggin temperatures, and an afternoon swagger. Not bad for $2.

No me gusta.

Fastforward to Cartagena for a minute.

Too hot, even for the fruit vendors.

The city wants to make sure I know the meaning of the word “enervating.” Apparently it often rains during this month, but none this year, so the city swelters, humidity like a punishment, sweating in the shade and stunned in direct sunlight.

I got a haircut in Leon less than two months ago, but they say your hair grows faster in hot places, and already it feels like a warm washcloth riding around on my head. Plus, K flies down here in a week, and I’d like to look sharp for her first sight of me in months, so off to the barber shop.

This one melted entirely.

Colombia is the ninth country I’ve gotten a haircut in, and all of the other ones went well (Nepali barberji’s assassination attempts notwithstanding) so I wasn’t nervous as I took a seat in the hair-covered chair and told the guy my usual bit about short on the sides and back, and longer on top, with gestures. Since I speak Spanish, I assumed if it went well in Poland, it would work out in Colombia.

The guy grabbed the buzzer and quickly took off most of the hair on the sides and back of my head, standing a pace back and reaching the buzzer towards me like he was offering meat to an alligator. He was fast. Really fast.

Okay, I thought. Feels cooler already.

Then faster than you can say “dagnabbit“ he put the guard one size longer on the buzzer and chopped off the rest. He never even touched the scissors.

I now have basically a buzz cut. Military style. Bullethead.

It wasn’t a haircut, it was a sheep sheering. And it looks baaaaaaad.

I haven’t looked like this since college, and there was a reason I stopped.

I sat in front of the mirror, covered in my own dearly departed hair, slightly wide-eyed, telling myself “well, ain’t shit you can do about it now” as he picked up the straight razor, clearly NOT changing the blade from the 637 guys before me, and scraped bare my sideburns and neck.

Now I hope all I got from him was a bad haircut. How do you say “hepatitis” in Spanish?
(It’s “hepatitis” just with Spanish “titis”.)

The whole incident can’t have taken longer than 4 minutes, and then I was slinking back to my hostel, where thankfully I have a private room. Suddenly all I can think about is our old family dog, Tila, a big old sweetheart with long red-brown hair, including big haunches of it behind her back legs.

We used to take her to the groomer now and then, and she would come home stinking of perfume and with those haunches shaved off, and would immediately slink away to hide in the corner, an expression of embarrassment and reproach in her gentle brown eyes.

So I guess it could be worse…at least he didn’t spray me with perfume.

I’m sorry for my appearance K. I’ll be the army recruit waiting outside your gate in Bogota next week.

Nepali Haircut

I got my hair cut yesterday.  I think that makes 7 countries where I've gotten one, 8 if you count the emergency beard removal in Guatemala.

There is a barbershop in between the veggie market and one of the convenience-y stores that has stacks of eggs and bags of potato chips hanging on long strings.  It was of course empty when we got there, but the vigilant barber soon showed up with his burning eyes and scruffy white coat.

His haircutting was speedy and precise while feeling chaotic and rushed.  The scissors never stopped snipping, usually in a rhythm of three, the first in the hair, the last in the air, and the second wherever it needed to be.

Then he got out the straight razor and I tried to monitor my attention and reactions for racism.  Did I feel more reassured when he changed the blade than I would have in America?  Did I pay extra attention to the authenticity of opening the packaging?  Would you find that justifiable?  Do I?

He tidied up the edges with expert strokes, which made me understand why barbers were the surgeons in the Middle Ages.  Those guys know how to use a blade.  Then it was aftershave powder with one of those little brushes, followed by a ferocious pinch at the nape of my neck that felt almost punitive...what did I ever do to you, Barberji?

Then he started beating on my head, karate chops before fists that made my vision bounce epically while I tried to hold my neck firm.

Once my vision calmed down he apparently forgave me and we made up with a brusque but enthusiastic massage, sweeping his hands up and over my noggin, down the sides, then around my ears in a precise and practiced pattern that felt like a very confused form of reiki.

He put one hand above and behind my ear on the left side of my head and the other reached around under my chin on the right, and then tried to kill me by breaking my neck.  Like Antonio Banderas in that one bar brawl scene in Desperado.  Luckily my manly sinews were too much for him, and he stopped just past the point where my uppermost vertebrae crunched like a car accident.  He tried again on the other side while I focused on not flexing a muscle, trying hard to avoid thinking about the damage we might inadvertently cause.  The second time, on the other side, he went a small amount further before the skeletal implosions began, though a millimeter feels like serious business at that point.

My neck didn't hurt beforehand, but after I swear afterwards I could turn my head like a damn barn owl.

Leaving the barbershop to pick up some okra for tonight's curry and cookies (digestives of course) for tomorrow morning's tea, I felt that I got more smiles than normal; I think the locals approved of my local barbershop participation.  And of course found my delirious smile highly entertaining.