Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 12, Issue 1 (April 1, 1937)

Beaten by a Whisker

Beaten by a Whisker.

Having back-heeled you into the whiskorial chair they gave your face a derogatory look and dived for the “makins.” They sloshed into the soap-soup and made for you like a white-washer intent on completing a sixty-hour job in a forty-hour week.

page 43

“Nice day,” they would bark and, when you opened your mouth to confirm the perjury—slosh!—you were scuppered to the tonsils. They treated your face like a gate, slamming it back and forth until your neck felt like a cork-screw. Then they shored up your chin and smacked your Adam's apple as though they hated fruit. Next they got at you with their bare hands and made a scrubbing-board of your face. They man-handled your nose, pulled out your upper lip and let it go back with a “woosh,” and left you blowing like a soaped geyser while they took the edge off the cutlery. Only barbers with an inferiority complex used sharp razors. A sharp razor tended to give the victim the false impression that he was a better man than the barber. They wanged their steel up and down the leather until it sang “I'll pull you through, sonny boy,” in “A” blunt. Then they stood over you and waved their hardware as though selecting a suitably vital spot for a quick take-off.

“Looks like dirty weather,” they prophesied while they stretched your ear until it looked like a book-mark, and skidded round it with the cut-and-come-again.

When the barber gave you back your face, except the bits that he had taken a dislike to, you felt fit for anything. You had tasted cold steel —and hot soap—and were a better man for it.