h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

October 14th 2006

Before I left the UK I arranged the last of the home improvements that I'd been meaning to sort out for ages - but you know what it’s like. Sometimes you just keep putting certain things off. But I was leaving the country - so it was now or never...

The improvements included decorating - carried out by yours truly, a new bathroom, new skirting boards in the bedrooms, a radiator in the conservatory, a new stair carpet and floor tiles in the hall. Anyone who has ever undertaken home improvements knows it’s great when all the work is finished - it’s just the upheaval and chaos involved in getting there that seems to be the problem.

Needless to say, by the time I’d bought all the materials, organised everything and everyone, made endless cups of tea and coffee for various tradesmen, swept up dust and rubble, moved furniture out of rooms - and then back in again, scrubbed the emulsion off my body, (how on earth did I manage to get it there?) all while trying to organise myself for a long term move to another country I was beginning to feel pretty frayed at the edges.

So that’s why I find myself sitting in a beauty parlour in Bahrain on a hot and humid Saturday morning. A facial, a manicure (for my now broken nails) and a pedicure sounds the perfect tonic.

The girls working in the salon are all from Thailand, and the girl giving me a facial is called Lin. We chat briefly, and she informs me that she has lived here for about two years. I ask her if she likes it, and she just smiles, shrugs her shoulders and tells me that it’s okay. The language barrier prevents me from probing any further. So she takes me into the back room and I just lie on the table and allow her get on with what she has to do. The facial is very relaxing and I can feel myself drifting away.

And now we go back into the main salon for the manicure and pedicure. While Lin gives me a manicure another Thai girl called May starts on my feet. I’ve never had a pedicure so I’m really looking forward to it. Oh my goodness! I have completely forgotten just how ticklish certain parts of my feet are. May starts to scrub - and I start to laugh, I laugh gently at first - and May continues with her work. But this is really ticklish, and my laughter gets louder and louder. I apologise (several times) but now that I’ve started I just can’t seem to stop. I’m squirming in the chair and roaring with laughter at the same time. May tells me that she wants to make my feet look very nice so she carries on regardless. I look around and see three Bahraini women laughing at my laughter. Soon May and Lin are laughing as well. And now everyone in the salon is laughing. How embarrassing, LOL!

Your words whisk me back to the barber's shop in Adliya (opposite Century International) where a Dinar gets a hair-cut accompanied by pampering as yet unparalelled in this life. The place is fitted out with huge shiny red hydraulically operated chairs, all around mirrors which extend the room to infinite proportions and scenes of some tropical island paradise, which in essence is where you are, and is filled with that brisk spicy aroma that so typifies a barber's shop. It truly has a men only feel. The barbers are all gentle-natured kind-faced subcontinentals and soon come to know me and my two sons. Three number twos is the usual request. The service is an absolute sensual treat, right from the moment the lilac coloured nylon cape is spread across my frontage and the soft white tissues are carefully tucked into the collar, serving both to protect the skin of my neck and to restrict the clippings from getting into my clothes. The shaver is fitted with the appropriately numbered guard wherefter the clunky click of the on-button folowed by the precision electric hum of the motor sends me covered with goose-pimples. A few minutes of shaving "tilt your head this way Sir", "tilt your head that way Sir" accompanied by slight but firm manual direction ensues and is followed up by the use of a cut-throat on my neck-pubes. The scrape of steel across skin so close to my ears is exhilerating. The barber uses his hands, his skin on my skin to run some sort of after-shave across the back of my neck, the moisture sharp contrast to the dryness of hair, and oh-so-cool as the alcohol evaporates drawing heat from my skin. The tonsorial effort itself is over. The fun however starts here. I recieve me a head massage, pushing and pulling at my scalp so hard that the skin of my forehead is stretched and furrowed. Then he chops rapidly (as if tossing a pizza base) at my head with the sides of his hands, alternately up and down, with a gap between the middle and ring fingers so that there is a click with each impact ... click, click, click. More massage nearly sends me to sleep so he brings me out of my torpor twisting my head sharply up and sideways in the manner that token guards get their necks broken in action movies. The pop as the gas explodes in the joints between my vertebrae is stark, and I am giddy for a few brief seconds.

He tidies me up with a few snips of the scissors before applying talcum powder all around my freshly exposed skin, a quick brush off with the soft but coarse badger hair brush and the tissues and cape are removed. I run my hands across the new spiky head, massage my neck and make sure it still functions in all directions and tell boy no.1 that it is his turn. Sittng in turns on a board spanning between the arms of the chair, the boys get the full treatment, the cut-throat and the after-shave somehow too harsh for their sensitive young skin. Except that I ask politely that they don't get the commando movement at the climax.

***

Suggest to James that he get at least one haircut there, if only for the experience.

That's a great story - lovely descriptions and I really enjoyed reading it. I have suggested it to James.....

It sounds as if you really enjoyed your stay here. Would you consider working abroad again?