The Barbershop Seven Read Online Free PDF

in the west of Scotland.
    He glanced at the other two to see if they'd noticed, but Chris was too busy discussing the on-going plight of Partick Thistle, while Wullie was contemplating the exact nature of the relationship between Laurence Olivier and Danny Kaye. Barney shrugged. If they were too busy discussing trivialities to notice real genius, then that was their problem.
    He turned and surveyed the shop, feeling good about himself. A warm glow. Like the pilot who lands the plane in a storm without a bump, or the teacher who discovers the one pupil in a thousand who understands triple differentiation, the barber who carries out the perfect haircut has reason to be proud.
    It was a small shop. A row of four chairs along one side next to the great bank of mirrors, and a long cushioned bench along the other, upon which the customers awaited their fate. Wullie worked the chair nearest the window, Chris next to him, then there lay an empty chair, occasionally filled on busy Saturdays by a young girl moonlighting from an expensive hairdressers in Kelvinside. At the back of the shop, working the fourth chair, was Barney, and he resented it. Behind him was a small alcove, making the room into a slight L-shape, where there was a fifth seat, a seat which hadn't been worked since the great hair rush of the late seventies, when every man in Britain had wanted a perm, so that they could look as much of an idiot as everyone else. It was some surprise to Barney that he had not been relegated all the way back there.
    There'd been a time when he'd had possession of the coveted window seat – for some fifteen years in fact – but he'd been ousted late one Friday afternoon in a bloodless coup. Wullie had been after the chair for some time and, using the fact that his father owned the shop to his advantage, he'd executed a manoeuvre that had relegated Barney to the back of the room. It'd been the talk of the shop for some time – the talk of hushed voices – but gradually the affair had quietened down, as Wullie had known it would, and they'd settled back into a steady routine.
    However, it had widened the gap between Barney and the other two men. They shared no interests whatsoever and consequently no conversation. And they also shared very few customers, most of them preferring to go to the younger men. Barney was left with a few old boys whose hair he had been cutting for years, a few men who didn't care, and the odd stray first-timers who didn't know any better.
    He looked over the queue of ten people crammed onto the seat and realised there were none who fitted any of the required categories. They would all be waiting for one of the other two bastards. However, he still had the post-dream-haircut glow about him. Surely at least one of them would have surveyed the majesty of the hair on the bloke who had just left. Surely brilliance such as that would not go unnoticed.
    He looked at the row of men, each with their private thoughts about the ordeal awaiting them. A mini-Death Row. Some sat with anticipatory relish, some were nervous, some were angry, present only on the instructions of their wives. Or mothers.
    'Who's next?' said Barney, with the confident air of a fighter who takes on all comers.
    Like a row of disciples denying all knowledge of Jesus under the scrutiny of an awkward centurion, most of the ten stared blankly ahead, ignoring him as best they could. The two or three nearest him felt obliged to shake their heads, although only one of them could do it while looking him in the eye. Barney gave them an incredulous stare, but since they were all ignoring him, it was wasted. A change in strategy was required.
    It is frequently effective for the unemployed barber to remorselessly select individuals who may well crack under the pressure of personal attention. Another useful lesson from Barber School, which Barney had never forgotten.
    'You, my good man,' he said pointing to the chap at the head of the queue, 'come on.'
    He had