It is said that St Finbarr found Cork, but my dad told it differently, Seemingly Finbarr set out from Dublin in the footsteps of St Patrick with the intention of standardising the many Celtic deities of the day into one God for one people. Not an easy task considering that we Celts had a God for every change in the weather. Anyway, Finbarr settled on a compromise and set about selling the Trinity package. Along the way, our missionary lost his way in the midlands, in present day Offaly, near where the town of Clara now stands. Accounts of the events that followed are sketchy, but it is said that the saint spent six months wandering aimlessly around the Bog of Allen.
"What that man went through was nobody's business," my father used to say.
He fought off wild dogs, boars and nanny goats, he was eaten alive by flying ants, horse flies and midges, his body was scarred and blistered by numerous encounters with furze bushes, nettles and sticky backs; starving, delirious, foot sore and threadbare, our hero was near death. Then one day, didn't he poke his head through the bushes at a place known locally now as Finbarr's View, off Blarney Street, and there, laid out before him, was the majestic and beautiful Lee Valley. His fading eyesight focused on a bustling little market town that centred on a ford on a river - St Finbarr had found Cork.
As my dad put it, "twas the Corkonians found St Finbarr, and he was a lucky man that we did 'cause the poor craythur was on his last legs."
Next morning, after a feed of pig's head and a good night's rest in a fine feathered bed, they brought the saint up to the top of our street where Jimmy O'Sullivan's great, great, great, great grandfather (give or take a few greats) gave him a cut and a shave - seemingly Finbarr's hair was a mess, and when you're trying to convince people to change something as fundamental as their gods, appearance is everything.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that generations of Creedon men have been getting their hair cut by generations of O'Sullivan men. I remember as a young boy in short pants arriving into Jimmy's father, Tommy, with a note from my mother saying: "Let the bone be your guide!". Tommy would place a plank across the arm rests and invite me to "sit up to the block" while informing me that my grandfather sat on the same board for a hair harvest by his grandfather - there was always something reassuring in that, as my grandda lived to a ripe old age and went to his grave still sporting a full head of fur.
There is an intimacy that develops between barber and customer; the barbershop is a place where men congregate without a smoke screen or glass to hide behind, a place where heads meet, a place where hairs are split regarding the validity of one politician over another, a place were men talk, and talk is free when treated with the confidentiality of a confessional. And every milestone of my life, be it Holy Communion, Confirmation, first dance, date or marriage, has been marked by a trip to O'Sullivan's hot-seat, like a recurring rite of passage.
You might well ask what has prompted this sudden outpouring of barbering nostalgia. Well, last Wednesday, I rented The Hairdresser's Husband (France, 1992) to while away a wet afternoon, and the floodgates of times past opened. Not that the film so much as shaves the subject of male bonding, the exact opposite in fact - it tells the story of Antoine (Jean Rochefort), who as a young boy develops an unhealthy obsession with a buxom hairdresser. An obsession that resurfaces in adulthood when he falls uncontrollably in love with a beautiful young hairdresser (Anna Galiena), so much so, he asks her to marry him during his first trim - a proposal she accepts on his return a few weeks later for a second snip - well, they say that the first cut is the deepest.
It is a poetic and romantic film that delves deep into one man's true love for the woman of his dreams. And not wishing to give away the twist in the end of the film, it's difficult not to notice that Antoine's dream is no more than a recurring nightmare.
There is a beautiful pace and matter-of-fact narration driving the story of The Hairdresser's Husband, a film in which the relationship is rarely explored beyond the confines of the shop. A bit like the relationship built up between my family and our barber; the Creedons and O'Sullivans never connect outside of business hours - we only see eye-to-eye in a mirror. Except once, not long before my father passed away, the two of us went fishing with Jimmy's dad - a very special day. I remember driving home in the car as the sun was going down, Papa Creedon was glowing, in full flight, telling me all about St Finbarr's arrival in Cork. I asked him if he thought the saint found it difficult to convince the people of Cork to change gods? "Not at all," said my dad, " shur' Corkonians are notoriously agreeable!"
The Hairdresser's Husband will set you thinking for long after the video is returned to the shelf - it connects deep down in the marrow of the emotions.
There is a dark sadness always looming throughout this sweet, romantic, love story - as the sadness of life is the inevitability of death. It certainly set the cogs of my mind in motion . . . hmm . . . that reminds me, I must go for a pint with Jimmy O'Sullivan sometime, maybe Christmas time. Then again, what would we have to talk about? Maybe it's time for another hair cut.
