MY SQUARE NECK RITE OF PASSAGE 1964

t's 1964, I'm 16, and the Swinging Sixties are passing me by in Stratford upon Avon. My only clothes are my Grammar School uniform of a grey suit, and I live in a small village six miles away so miss out on all the after-school life of my classmates who live in Stratford. In any case I have no money for frivolity – we count the slices of bread at home; and my mother expects me back at 6 pm.

But I do have to have my hair cut – and I go to a barber, the first shop on the right in Meer Street after turning in from Henley Street; 32 Meer Street (it's not a barber any more).

The barber services the local fashion conscious Stratford youth, and he looks at me with my bad acne, never having had anything to do with girls, in my ill fitting suit, white shirt, black tie and polished black round toe cap shoes, with a overgrown short-back-and-sides, and he discerns something. He leans forwards to my ear and says, conspiratorially,

“Would you like a Square Neck?”.

What a suggestion! – I have never heard of a Square Neck, but in that instant I think “ My God, A SQUARE NECK – this is the beginning of REAL LIFE” and I wanted one very badly. “Yes please” I say; and I duly got one. A node in one’s time line.

I am forever grateful to that barber, whoever he was, for initiating me, albeit a late comer, into adulthood, and whenever I return to Stratford I make a pilgrimage to 32 Meer Street in memory of it.

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