Short Back and Sides
Page 14
Sex crime
29 August 2010
Customer: There was nothing in the papers or the radio but talk of whether to name or disclose the addresses of anyone convicted of sex crimes. It’s an important issue, but it’s like when a big story breaks there’s nothing else discussed.
Barber: There was a story a customer told me about a woman in south Wales a few years ago who had her house vandalised by an anti-paedophile mob. They sprayed ‘paedo’ across her front door. It turned out when the police looked into it that she was a paediatrician. Information can be a dangerous thing in the wrong hands!
Customer: Maybe they were dyslexic!
The health service
30 August 2010
Customer: There’s a Romanian woman who sells the Big Issue outside the shop I work in, and she’s very friendly, so over the last year we’ve gotten to know her. But a while ago she disappeared for weeks, and no-one knew where she was. She had told us her husband wasn’t well and they were waiting for an operation for him, and we started to think the worst. Then, out of the blue, last week she was back selling outside the shop again. We asked her where she’d been, and she told us that they’d been waiting for so long for her husband’s operation that she decided to book flights home for herself and her husband. They went to the hospital, arranged the operation in Romania for free, had a holiday, saw the family and came back!
Barber: That’s incredible. They could get the operation so quickly over there, and for free! What’s going on over here?
Cuckoo land
31 August 2010
Customer: The sentences the judges are passing down for serious crimes are ridiculous. The law is no deterrent any more!
Barber: They’re all living in cuckoo land, far removed from the real world. So are a lot of the politicians. Look at Pádraig Flynn’s argument on ‘The Late Late Show’, for example, telling the nation that he was stretched by the cost of running his three houses, the maids and the cars. It would all be so funny if it wasn’t so serious.
Gill & Macmillan
Hume Avenue
Park West
Dublin 12
Ireland
with associated companies throughout the world
www.gillmacmillan.ie
© Peter Quinn 2011
First published by Gill & Macmillan 2011
This ebook edition published by Gill & Macmillan 2011 Illustrations by Eoin Coveney
9780717151905 (epub)
9780717152490 (mobi)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the publishers.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
About the Author
Peter Quinn is a Dublin barber with a keen ear for a good story. This quirky collection of exchanges with his customers range from funny to eye opening, covering everything from the weather and the economy to the fall of the church and the spiralling cost of NAMA. Yet each tale is as individual as the customer and his hairstyle.
www.facebook.com/shortbackandsidesbook
About the Publisher
Gill & Macmillan publishes a wide range of Irish-interest non-fiction, from history to economics, politics to cookery and biography to children’s. Since 1968 we have published outstanding authors and groundbreaking books such as David McWilliams’ The Pope’s Children, Noel Browne’s Against the Tide, Garret FitzGerald’s All in a Life, Augustine Martin’s Soundings and three generations of Ballymaloe’s Allen family on our cookery list.
Our story begins in 1856 when Michael Henry Gill, then printer for Dublin University, purchased the publishing and bookselling business of James McGlashan, forming McGlashan & Gill. In 1875 the name was changed to M.H. Gill & Son. In 1968 Gill & Macmillan was established as a result of an association with Macmillan of London, which had been founded in 1843. Gills had a shop on Dublin’s O’Connell St that sold books for 123 years until 1979. Today our bookshop can be found at www.gillmacmillan.ie.
Gill & Macmillan also publishes a well-established range of educational books and resources for all levels: primary, secondary, college and university. We also provide a distribution service for the majority of Ireland’s independent publishers.
For more information about us, our titles, or to join our mailing list, please visit www.gillmacmillan.ie.
Other eBooks available from Gill & Macmillan:
Irish History
News from a New Republic: Ireland in the 1950s – Tom Garvin
King Dan: The Rise of Daniel O’Connell, 1775–1829 – Patrick M. Geoghegan
Liberator: The Life and Death of Daniel O’Connell, 1830–1847 – Patrick M.Geoghegan
The Bombing of Dublin's North Strand, 1941: The Untold Story – Kevin C. Kearns
The Reluctant Taoiseach: A Biography of John A. Costello – David McCullagh
The Plantation of Ulster – Jonathan Bardon
Enigma: A New Life of Charles Stewart Parnell – Paul Bew
Ireland's Arctic Siege: The Big Freeze of 1947 – Kevin C. Kearns
A City in Wartime: Dublin 1914–1918 – Pádraig Yeates
The Western Front: Irish Voices from the Great War – William Sheehan
Funding the Nation: Money and Nationalist Politics in Nineteenth-Century Ireland –Michael Keyes
The Year of Disappearances: Political Killings in Cork, 1921–1922 – Gerard Murphy
Irish Politics and Current Affairs
The End of the Party: How Fianna Fáil Lost its Grip on Power – Bruce Arnold and Jason O’Toole
Bertie: Power and Money – Colm Keena
Fianna Fáil: A Biography of the Party – Noel Whelan
True Life
Dying to Survive – Rachael Keogh
Little Fighters: The Million-to-One Miracles – Angie Benhaffaf
Buen Camino! A Father–Daughter Journey from Croagh Patrick to Santiago de Compostela – Natasha and Peter Murtagh
Let This Be Our Secret: The Shocking True Story Of A Killer Dentist, His Mistress, How They Murdered Their Spouses – And How They Almost Got Away With It – Deric Henderson
A Parish Far From Home – Philip O’Connor
Health and Well-being
The Courage to Be Happy: A New Approach to Well-Being in Everyday Life – Colm O’Connor
The Survivor’s Mindset: Kick-start your health with the power of your mind and body – Bernadette Bohan
The Choice: The true story of a mother’s triumph over cancer – Bernadette Bohan
Reference
Words We Don't Use (Much Anymore) – Diarmaid Ó Muirithe
The Money Doctor Finance Annual – John Lowe
Humour
Rowdy Rhymes and Rec-im-itations – Vincent Caprani
Short Back and Sides: Tales From An Irish Barber Shop – Peter Quinn