Three Stories About Hair – 1

The Freemason’s Hall Affair

So I have a Rob Tyner bouffant. Back in my younger, early 2000s London days, it was at its zenith. Hilarity or calamity were never far away……

It was one of those rare, balmy London summers. Still affordable, night ‘Party’ bus every 2 hours, tobacco aged pub London. My mate Dave and I were just embarking on a long and wonky musical road (with equally hilarious and oft calamitous moments as my bouffant) and as it went, our day jobs were close together. At least Dave had some kudos – he was working in the Rough Trade record shop in Neal’s Yard. Yours truly was allegedly working in a pre Lyon’s review civil service department loathed by all called Ofsted. The offices for standards in education…. It was a back street 6 minute walk/2 minute skate from Rough Trade. A journey which nearly always took me past The Freemason’s Hall.

So pretty much every lunch time I used to go see Dave, check out some music, eat and then disappear to the magic triangle by Seven Dials. A weird, little isolated courtyard, where it was rumoured that another Dave, Stewart, had a penthouse with weird carpets……

This is where we’d smoke pot – usually one of Dave’s old school sleeping bag crossed with a Nik Nak joints – talk music and nonsense and generally avoid returning to work on time. My hour lunches were often 90 minute affairs, but I definitely pushed the boat out to two hours on more than a few occasions, returning a little bleary eyed but remarkably concentrated. On what precisely was anyone’s guess. I mean, work was not taxing and there was no danger of being fired in those halcyon civil service days. I knew this because there was a chap there called Lance – a deeply devout born again christian who audibly talked to god from 9–5 every day whilst his computer cycled through all its screensaver options.

There were other bastions of taking it easy as well, but those are other stories. Although I do recall passing at least 2 months where I literally did nothing except research and buy old guitars, synths, amps and champagne sparkle Ludwigs on the relatively new at the time ebay. Oh, maybe i paused that to do The Guardian crossword (photocopied) over a coffee at around 11…. and maybe around 4 too for a little floor wander to say hi to folk, and if I needed a chuckle, I’d pass by Gabriel’s office. Not for a chat mind, he was a busy HMI. But never, anywhere, ever had I (or have since) seen such a spectacular paper balancing act. Bear in mind, this was a man close to retirement and everyone, from just joiners to nearly leavers, was still tripping out about having the internet at work. Like, you could do something other than minesweeper and backgammon when the boredom just got too hard to take. Let’s just say Gabriel hadn’t yet entered the computer age. Even though there was one in his office, he had a secretary and she dealt with all of that. I think he just used it as an extra reading light for all that paper. There was essentially a path way to his desk, which was also covered in paper, his computer screen was on top of paper, as was his tea cup, diary… some days Gabriel was probably on top of paper. The shelves were covered in it, as was the floor, apart from the pathway of course. Mounds, mountains and cascading waterfalls of the stuff. It was beautiful. Like seeing something ancient that was at its height, just before its swift fall into extinction.

Sometimes I volunteered for the mass shred as well — where you got to chuck huge bundles of paper into one of those big industrial shredders. Just to have some task that had a structure to it, other than the crossword. But I digress.

So that particular balmy summer, the aforementioned Freemason’s Hall was being renovated. It was covered in scaffolding and closed to everyone. And every day there was a small army of builders, labourers and contractors swarming all over it. Some of them, it seemed to me on my daily passing, were also bastions of taking it easy and I felt a sense of camaraderie with their approach and I’d often smirk as I caught snippets of their banter. I even got to recognising some of their faces and exchanging the odd hey.

Then one day on my outward journey, there was an unmistakeable buzz and hum from the entire building site. I’d noticed this before and it often meant that the collective macho, lechy workman vibe had caught wind of a particularly beautiful female pedestrian and the wolf whistle/phwoarr chorus was about to erupt. This happened a fair bit— Select model agency was just around the corner from there. Not on this particular day though. On I went and met Dave…..

As I returned, that buzz and hum was still there. Or had it just started up, i wondered….? And then the answer hit me. A chorus line, at least 100 strong and with wildly varied singing and dancing abilities launched into a full throated, energetic and remarkably well choreographed version of Leo Sayer’s 1976 hit You Make Me Feel Like Dancing. Backing vocals, falsettos, the works man. Everyone and everything stood still – taxi drivers slowed, waiters gawked, tourists stood open mouthed and confused. Gradually the penny began to drop for most observers, as I stood laughing, red faced but oh so oddly proud, basking in the lowest common denominator humour (there had been many previous Leo, Sideshow Bob, Art Garfunkel moments before. Hardly anyone ever mentioned the MC5) that i was the punchline to. I mean, it’d clearly taken some organising and perhaps even some practice (Who had determined who was doing backing vocals, who was taking lead….?) There was just something wonderfully stupid and heartwarming about the little pause bubble in the middle of metropolitan, cosmopolitan, busy London. What more could I do, except wait it out and take a bow at the end. Which resulted in an entirely earnest applause from the workmen and some of those who had stopped to witness this odd little scene….. no doubt now it would have been partially captured on video and perhaps it’d be a viral smash.

Thank fuck that didn’t happen. The workmen would probably be labelled ‘hairist’ to go with their obvious sexism, I’d get hit with cultural approbation for simply growing my hair and there’d likely be a strong, opinionated and totally idiotic comment based debate about how this represented an insult to someone’s sensibilities somewhere.

Anyways, back i wandered to work. Whistling. But certainly not Leo Sayer. I fucking hate that song….