Pat's second page
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By Pat Thomas
Wind your way down Baker Street in Brighton, and, believe me, nostalgic, syrupy saxophone melodies will be furthest from your mind. This noisy little thoroughfare, off the London Road, is home to a shoddy selection of shops and a cheesy tattoo parlour, and would be as insignificant as it is unglamorous, were it not for being home to one of the hairdressing world's best-kept secrets.
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Skulking
Having been frozen in time for the last forty years, 'Coopers for Haircuts' no longer exists in the universe as we know it, but instead skulks in those dark shadowy corners normally reserved for nightmares, fevered visions and sketches from the League of Gentlemen.
Doll's heads
I first stumbled across Cooper's many years ago by chance and remember gazing in the window in awe at the strange and disturbing dolls' heads sporting lopsided grey toupees, and the peeling and faded black and white photos of haircuts that would frighten your granny. A hand-written sign read 'haircuts 100p', and just inside I could make out the silhouette of a man who passed more than a casual resemblance to Mr. Burns from the Simpsons. I was, naturally, intrigued.
Mr Cooper was a great friend to me.
Nine years later, the price may have gone up by 20p, but otherwise nothing seems to have changed. Unable to seduce Mr. Cooper into an interview, I met instead with aficionado to the cause and compere of the Comedy Dairy, Dave Mountfield, and asked him how he first became initiated into Mr. Cooper's lair.
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In the post war years of 1946-1947, Carden school had yet to be built, so Patcham barn was used as a temporary school for many of the younger children moving into the new Hollingbury estate. I went to school there as a five year old child, but apart from the original "bull's eye" windows on the doors, the stacks of old furniture in the hallways and a very distinctive and rather unpleasant musty smell.
I remember little about the building itself. What is more embedded in my mind is the journey too and from school behind the houses in Ladies Mile Road, many of which had apples to scrump and disused air raid shelters to play in. At school we made pom-poms by winding wool round two back to back cardboard milk bottle tops and listened to our teacher read from Enid Blyton's "Wishing Chair." After Carden was completed and the overspill children left, the barn remained as a community building and for some years served as the local youth club.
Although 16th century or earlier, in those days few of us ever thought of quibbling when we were told the barn had to be demolished because it was unsafe. I later found out that it was so unsafe that the weeks planned for its demolition became months and that the central centuries old oak posts supporting the roof were so strong they had many of the qualities of reinforced concrete. I believe that the demolition company had such a geat difficulty cutting or burning them, they eventually had to tow several of them away almost complete and bury them somewhere.