British Summer Time Madness

The arrival of British summer time last weekend had a very strange effect on a number of people within the surrounding area of Pavers Place, they all felt the need for a haircut. Given the state of the motley crew queuing up outside Kens on Monday morning I would say that they have eschewed the need for winter duvets, and had instead been growing their own blankets.

This was, of course, great for Ken’s business, if only he had been there. On Mondays his opening time is 8 o’clock, with a fair wind and happy heart, he usually makes it by 8.15, on the odd occasion that he is in a bad mood it will be 8.30, this week however there was no sign of him by 9. The queue outside the barbers had been forming since long before the scheduled opening hour and were becoming louder and more disruptive as the time went on, in fact they had started spilling into the road.

I couldn’t understand it myself, waiting all that time for a haircut, there are any numbers of small barbers around these streets, but Ken’s customers were nothing if not loyal. By 10 o’clock, and with no sign of Ken, Reg had decided to take matters into his own hands, you couldn’t walk on the pavement outside number 9, due to the protruding bush, and now you couldn’t walk on the road either, without wrestling your way through a crowd of hairy men. Donning a very formal looking cap and a hi viz jacket he started trying to corral the crowd back into an orderly queue. The first few people he managed to manoeuvre were calm and receptive to his instructions, however those nearer the front mistook his actions for an attempt to queue jump and I could tell that things could soon turn ugly. Reg has the delicacy of a rhino at a tea dance and I don’t think it helped that his ex-butchers fingers went in for a jab at one man in particular.

‘Oi, get those porky sausages away from me, fatso.’

‘Fatso!’ the high pitched squeal had come from Margaret, who, I presume had come out to defend her husband’s honour, or at least to call an ambulance, in the case of a heart attack.

‘My Reg is not, fat, he has a fit body for a man of his age.’

‘Hear, hear’, this from Tom who had also joined the queue, although I have no idea why, he has less hair on his head than I have on my legs.

Thankfully at this point Ken drew up in his car, staring at the scene he burst into fits of laughter, this just made Reg worse.

‘What are you laughing at, this is all your fault, these morons are waiting for you, where have you been?’

‘Hey man, don’t worry, I’m just a popular guy, they are real keen, good job I’m early.’

‘Early! You are two hours late’, Reg was looking dangerously red.

‘No, no, no – look at the time man, it’s just gone 8’, he held up his watch to show the assembled crowd that his time piece did, in fact, read 8 o’clock.

They all calmed down and after a mini investigation by Margaret it was revealed that rather than put the clocks forward on Sunday morning Ken had instead put them back. I think he must have been in a coma for the rest of the time, but his excuse did seem to appease both Reg and the waiting queue.

Yesterday was April Fool’s Day and as a complete break from their normal personality traits Reg and Margaret put a sign on Ken’s shop door, it said, ‘ NEVER AN EARLY BIRD, MORE A LATER ALLIGATOR’. I thought this was a very poor example of an April fool’s joke but Ken did laugh at it when he arrived.

This morning there was another hoo ha in the road and I did wonder if Ken had reverted to his earlier time zone, however it was Reg, Margaret and Tom who had gathered outside number 9. The bush had miraculously been transformed in the night, not quite to Reg’s pleasing though, as it was now sharp and pointed and a lot more dangerous than it had

been previously; marching over to confront Ken he saw that the note he and Margaret had written had now been amended with the words, ‘Bush awhile crocodile’. Reg's sense of humour took a sudden spectacular nose dive.