Cliff Buchler (email):
Spent the weekend with daughter and son-in-law under Goats’ Mountain. Normally a relaxing interlude – surfing, tanning, wining and dining.
Not this time around.
In fact, unnerving. Son-in-law, instead of inviting me to go fishing or hiking or some such manly outing, he suggests a facial. At his salon, nogal.
A facial for a man who’s a deep-sea diver, fisherman, done sixteen Cape Argus cycle races, umpteen life-saving competitions locally and abroad, with gold and silver medals to prove his masculinity.
Mid-life crisis? Can’t be, given his age, unless one can have more than one. Last time he bought a motor cycle and wheelied up and down Chapman’s Peak, causing rock falls.
My immediate thought is a heart-stopper. Is he emerging from the cupboard? Has he over all the years been secretly putting on a face and wearing women’s clothes and high heels when his wife was away? Or maybe she knew and kept it from the world?
Was this his way of softening the blow by inviting me to accompany him to the salon?
The thought of arriving home with a pan covered in smudged lipstick, running mascara and rouge accentuating wrinkles and double chin, has my temples throbbing. My wife’s reaction? Send me packing to join the dwergies, who in turn will not tolerate an ancient giant queen in their midst. Remember Gulliver’s Travels?
Is it out of sheer curiosity, or at son-in-law’s pleading I acquiesce?
The salon nestles among other smart establishments in a major shopping centre. On entering I espy three old-fashioned barber chairs and display cabinets filled with cut-throat razors, shaving brushes with genuine badger hair and other objects associated with a barbershop. Then I spot the name of the salon. It is in fact, a saloon. A barbershop, fashioned on the traditional English one. So what son-in-law calls a facial is simply a shave.
Whew! My fears are unfounded. Son-in-law remains an OK oke.
Nevertheless what I see on the three old chairs is discomforting. Three bodies with heads covered in steaming towels. Like mummies.
But what emerge is a surprise. Three happy fellows with faces pink and glowing. And one is none other than founder of Waltons Stationers, in his early nineties. Regular customer.
Save for claustrophobia under the towels, I come out facially renewed. Another Mr Waltons in the making?
I recommend a facial, aka steam shave.
www.georgeherald.co.za
www.cliffsclout,wordpress.net
