brett the barber

The sign for the Walden Barber Shop has intrigued me for a while now and today I saw 'the barber' putting out the street sign and hot footed up to explore.

What a fantastic place, designed and fitted as an 'old fashioned' barbers complete with checked floor, striped pole,proper crank up and reclining chairs, pots of pomade and menthol shaving balm, tubes of mustache wax, shakers of talcum powder, piles of white towels and yes cut throat razors.

This is Brett who came to barbering when he worked in a Barbers Shop 20 years ago (he must have been about ten at the time!!) and loved it. One of his specialties is 'head tattooing', very intricate designs shaved (with the cut throat) into short cropped hair usually around the sides and base of the head. (When my lads were younger these designs were called tracks and created using clippers.)
He also has a couple of very cool tatts of guess who? Yes Sweeney Todd!

(Also learned that because of Health and Safety rules and regs, cut throats have disposable blades so no need for the strop. Shame!
I remember in the bathroom in our grandparents' house in Scotland a leather strop hanging by the mirror and a rolled leather bag containing grandpa B's razor.)