On the uphill, right-hand corner of Valencia with Muntaner is a barber’s of this very name. It sits quietly, midway on the chamfer (chaflán in Spanish), elbowing its narrow front for space with a Galician bar hugging it’s right and a boutique wine shop straddling what remains of the space to it’s left. The latter still emails me periodically with offers and discounts regarding its latest promotions as if I’d never left the district and carried on being a good patron. Our flat was on Muntaner 88. For the last four years, since my marriage went to the wall, I have chosen “to not do the hood” by a radius of three blocks in any direction from where Valencia crosses Muntaner; I can only presume the barber’s still exists.

I must have walked passed it hundreds of times in the four years we had lived there together (if not more), acknowledging its presence and knowing it was there but not attributing any more or less importance to it than that which I gave any other decent, modest, family-run business in the neighborhood. I only ever went in there to get my hair cut twice and both those times were in the weeks that followed our separation. I haven’t been passed it in almost four years but I imagine little has changed.

At first glance you would be forgiven for thinking you were walking past a pet-shop. The narrow shop front it occupies, minus the glass door to the left, lets you look inside onto an enclosure, full of chirping canaries, as wide and tall as the pane of glass itself and about a meter deep; the “cage” being made up of netting and enclosing a rather large tree-branch that serves as a perch to its inhabitants. Enter and move past this instillation and you’ll find a battery of three vintage barber’s chairs in a small, clean, mirrored interior whose décor seems not to have changed since the early sixties. There seems nothing contrived about this and I’ve seen its interior used, for its aesthetic appeal no doubt, on local TV commercials a number of times these last few years to promote one service or another. The clientele is native, unpretentious and local. The second and last time I went in for a haircut must have been on a slow day as several of the barbers were slouched in chairs reading the paper. I was attended by whom I took to be the owner of the establishment, if anything by how the others seemed to defer to him. A man in his mid sixties, he sported a magnificent, blow-dried and tinted mane that reminded me of Rafael (the singer, not the painter). Set against the backdrop of a genuine time warp, Vivanco charged fifteen euros for a sensible haircut.

I mention this place because I always thought its name would have been the perfect acronym for a business run by my parents in law of the time. But their business is not hair but leather and they run a successful operation under a long established brand name of their own, thank you very much. I have not seen them for some time but I retain the deepest affection for them both, as I do for the other members of their extended family that once upon a time I was married into. I don’t suppose they would object to my describing them as being very driven and highly measured in equal parts; qualities I very much admire in them. Being quite practical and the very definition of common sense, business interests of theirs generally brought them our way in spring and sometimes in the late autumn; part of their trip devoted to work, the other part devoted to leisure that was never quite divorced from work. They would charge into our lives with all their energy, in my mind at least, to the tune of “When the Saints Come Marching In”. Plans were relaxed yet highly structured and calls were made several times a day to make sure operations were running smoothly back on the Island. I don’t believe they ever really switch off from work. I recall one occasion they were here and the four of us were planning to go to France for a few days. It was a Friday leading on to Semana Santa. I knocked off work around about three and went off to meet them both and my ex at a restaurant on Carrer Paris for a late lunch. I arrived half way through the first course, said my hellos and dropped myself casually into my chair, feeling very pleased with myself as I made some comment about how fantastic it was that I was now on holiday for the next ten days and would not have to think about such dreary things as work and such. They looked at me as if expecting some sort of punch line before the conversation moved on to some other topic.