A plucked chicken

We three children spent many happy hours and days on our parents’ allotment, set out on land leased from the National Coal Board (NCB). We mostly grew vegetables, and had some soft-fruit bushes. But we also kept hens, and fresh eggs were nearly always guaranteed outside the moulting season. Mum baked nearly every day.

Our cockerel was never too popular with some of our neighbours who backed onto the allotments, as they would be woken often before dawn by a shrill, half-strangled crow.

We had an egg incubator. This was kept in mum and dad’s bedroom, as the eggs needed a regular quarter-turn, even during the night. We youngsters would peer through the glass and watch in amazement as a tiny pointed beak would eventually break the sack and shell, and a tiny, damp, feathered, dinosaur would burst out. We made a small, carboard chicken-run in the house, where we would keep the fluffy babies warm under a light, and feed them until they were strong enough to be taken to their allotment quarters. They were part of the family.

So, it was always a traumatic day when dad decided we were to have chicken for tea. Mum was probably always against the idea, partly because dad would hang the unfortunate creature on the back of the kitchen door after he had done the dirty-deed [Alix: and partly because she doesn’t actually like chicken].

As part of the preparation, he would pluck the feathers in handfuls. But there was always a bit of keratin stubble left behind. This required burning off, and I can’t remember if he used a series of matches, a burning paper or a blowtorch. In any case, there lingered that horrible smell of burning hair. Any time any hot ember from our log fire in Cirencester spits out onto our rug, the smell takes me back to this childhood kitchen memory.

I was whisked back there again yesterday!

Billy Connolly once did a sketch about hair growth and the aging process. I can’t remember the details, but his thesis went along the lines that men don’t grow any less hair as they age: it simply grows in different places. The hair loss of a receding hair line is replaced by accelerated eyebrow growth, with new hairy outposts appearing in the ears and nose. He said his pubic hair was so long, you could see it coming out of the legs of his jeans. But I didn’t believe that. The rest of it, though, is true.

Gocek

I had become a bit ‘wild-man-of-the-woods’ on board, and now, when passing several Turkish barbers in Gocek, even one of our guests remarked that perhaps I should use these local facilities. So, yesterday I stepped inside one of the many gentlemen’s establishments. My grey-haired barber sported a pony tail, and had the same-sized English vocabulary as my Turkish one. I did a snip-snip motion that said, please keep off the clippers.

All was going well: he took his time, and Alix (sitting behind me in the waiting area) looked up occasionally and nodded approvingly. He meticulously topiarised my eyebrows, and forensically manicured my nasal passages. Just ears to go.

Before I could raise a newly coiffured eyebrow, he got a spatula and dipped it into bowl of hot, dark wax, scooping a dollop out and blowing on it. He smeared it over the outside of one outer ear, then the next. Then he waited. Before readying me for the next bit, he grabbed hold of one ear with one hand, and ripped off the wax coating in one dramatic gesture with his other. “Oowww”. Then he ran round to my other side and repeated the rip. “Yeeeow.”

“Crikey, thank heavens that’s over”, I thought. But, no – tufty inner ear hair was bothering him. He dipped one cotton-bud into the hot wax and, after some blowing, stuck it in my ear and left the other end sticking out horizontally. He completed the symmetry. And waited. I looked like Shrek.

Eventually, he lunged at me and yanked the cotton bud from inside my right ear. “Yikes”. The left ear proved more bothersome, but he succeeded on the second attempt. My eyes watered.

Right, I started to get ready to stand up. But wait a moment. He splashed my face with some cheap-smelling, floral Colone. Now I remember from school that these things contain alcohol and are flammable. So, imagine my surprise, when he lit a long taper and approached my face with the flaming end. Soon there was a ball of flame billowing around my right visage. “Blimey!” I gripped the arms of the barber’s chair, and tensed up for the mirrored repeat.

The barber smiled. Job done. Tourist entertained, albeit slightly surprised. I later learned that this whole procedure is a local speciality. There are some male ex-pats out here, who have gone many years without having the courage to go through with this. But, as Alix says, they don’t look as well-groomed as I now do!

I had smelled the burning facial hair, though, and was again reminded of our childhood chicken tea!

Ps [Alix] Many years ago, skipper and I were off on a summer holiday. He may think his ear wax was painful, but he’s never had a bikini wax. On my return from the torture chamber, my beloved asked eagerly “Did you have a Hawaiian?”, whereupon I burst out laughing and suggested he meant a Brazilian. In which case, I may have reminded him of his childhood chicken tea, albeit in a slightly different fashion.