Smiley Face

           I was walking down to the barber’s when I paused to cross a junction that used to be busy but is now corona-quiet. There was just me and a lady on a bike waiting dutifully at a red light opposite. She was wearing specs and one of those safety helmets that looks like a Stirling Moss hand-me-down from the 1950s. As I approached her, we made eye contact – there being nothing else happening – and, instead of looking away, she smiled at me. I was unsure how to react. Did we know each other? I searched my memory, swiftly. She was aged about 50, tall, slim and sensibly dressed. Yes, it could be…but no, it wasn’t. I managed an uncertain flicker of a smile by way of a polite return but, as I came alongside her, decided to explain myself, lest she thought I was flirting. I said, “I’m sorry, I thought you were someone I know.” “That’s OK,” she replied, grinning now. “I was smiling because you have a friendly face.” I thanked her for the compliment but was at a loss what else to say. Fortunately, her light turned green and she pushed off, sparing us both any further embarrassment.

          The event was surprising to me, not because it was an apparently spontaneous display of goodwill – they do happen from time to time – but because, having left home in a mood that registered more at the crotchety end of the scale than the euphoric, I assumed that my condition would be reflected on my face. Not so apparently and, cheered by this outcome, I stopped at the Greek deli a few yards further on to buy a slab of spanakopita to take home for a celebratory lunch. The man behind the counter also had a friendly smile for me. But he always does.

          Even the barber smiled when I walked into his shop, but that was possibly because he had been sitting alone, waiting for custom for some time. He informed me, with some delight, that my fee would just about cover the expense he had incurred earlier on his regular visit to the chiropodist. “I’m in the wrong business,” he said, explaining that chiropodists get rich on expensive, fifteen-minute corn treatments. He then asked me the stock barber question. “Have you been away anywhere?” I told him I had not but that I have a trip coming up – hence the haircut. He made no comment. The barber, as I have come to realise, only asks questions as a way of introducing topics upon which he intends to expound. So I, the captive audience, then listened to his account of his recent holiday in Wales. Holidays in Wales can be either wet and windy or dry and sunny: his had been the latter, but the weather was not, for once, the main topic. Prime position went to the zip wire ride that he had been given as a birthday present. I imagined him dangling inelegantly, Boris Johnson-like, over a shallow, tree-studded valley but whoever gave him the token had something else in mind. Yes, there was a gentle practice run but the main event, according to his description, involved his being strapped on to a roller mechanism and launched, head first, down an almost vertical line stretched across a deep, disused quarry. He never did tell me who the donor was, though I suspect it was his son, of whom he sometimes complains.

          The barber, evidently invigorated by his zip wire experience, flashed a self-satisfied smile as he finished off my quiff with a triumphant flick. And so, having left home that morning with no expectation of anything out of the ordinary happening, I walked back feeling like Tintin, clean cut and expectant, a smile hovering on my lips, ready to break out at the slightest provocation.