The Haircuts

Father Richard has twin sons Phillip and Rich.

Rich

They both arrived home after being away for some time, Rich from Tanzania where he had been working on a tobacco estate and Phillip from Johannesburg where he had been singing.

Their mother Fiona took one look at them and said firmly: “These boys must have haircuts. So while Fiona did some
peaceful shopping father Richard, Claire his daughter, the twins and I set off to find a cottage in Borrowdale where the hairdresser lived.

We had bought some chicken pies for our lunch. We were soon shown through the charming cottage onto a spacious verandah and sat in comfortable chairs where we quite rudely munched our pies while Rich was summoned for a haircut at a table and chair on the other end of the verandah.

He had very thick copper coloured hair and the attractive little hairdresser set to with a snapping of scissors and a few grumbles about the length or thickness of his hair which she said would take half an hour to cut instead of the usual 15 minutes. Teasingly she said that in fact she should charge him twice as much.

All was going well until her young son brought out onto the verandah, an alert white parakeet that flew at once onto Philip’s lap. When in doubt Philip sings, so he sang a little song on the lines of: “I wish you’d fly away, leave me be like yesterday.”

"I don't do parrots."

Discouragingly the white parakeet nestled under his arm.

But soon enough, the parakeet became bored with that and wandered over to Claire, who retreated behind a chair saying: “I don’t do parrots.”

Then it marched across to Father Richard and tackled his shoelaces. When in doubt father Richard smokes. The parrot moved away swiftly looking affronted.

Father smokes when in doubt

I told them that I thought they showed no courage at all when it came to birds.
A little later I moved from the verandah to the lounge to look more closely at a painting. As I came back onto the verandah the parakeet gave me a good peck on the left heel, which bled. Cotton wool and plasters were rushed to the scene and the parrot was removed to its cage.

Claire said to me: “You see Granny that is why we don’t like parrots.”

My reply was: “Well Claire, I’m glad he pecked me as I didn’t kick up much of a fuss. Imagine if he had pecked you lot.”

The last thing we saw when we left the cottage were two wrinkly-browed heavily dew-lapped dogs with their noses pressed against the glass door gazing at the parrot cage. We wonder if it ever got its just deserts – and they just got dessert?