Hopefully people have been keeping up my weekly quote in my A Little Something For The Weekend feature. You may or may not have wondered if there was a meaning to my A Little Something For The Weekend posts. Well, there is and it’s connected to the phrase “A Little Something For The Weekend.” If you’re English, the phrase will mean a lot. If you grew up in my dad’s era, the custom was to get a haircut on a Friday night so you looked your best for the weekends and ready to impress the ladies. When money changed hands with the barber, he was likely to say, “A little something for the weekend?” This was code for “Do you want any condoms?” And that was how Jack the Lad got hooked up for the weekend.
Now picture a younger and much smaller Simon. From the age of seven, I was allowed to go to Graham’s, the local a hair salon to get my hair cut. Graham was a pretty cool guy, a typical hairdresser from the 70’s. Very much a ladies man. The vast majority of his salon was dedicated to the ladies, but one corner was an old school barbers, complete with private entrance. It was dark and grim compared to its more extravagant ladies side. Graham would come around to the gents side to cut my hair. He’d put a wooden board across the arms of the barber’s chair to cut my hair. A right of passage for me was when Graham said the immortal words, “Simon, we don’t need the board anymore.” I was a man (at age 11¾).
However, Graham wasn’t always available to cut my hair, so Graham’s only other barber stepped in. Now this guy was old, old school. It didn’t matter what you asked for, you got the same cut short back and sides that street urchins have been sporting since Oliver Twist was a lad. Needless to say, the first time he cut my hair and I went to pay him, he muttered the immortal line, “A little something for the weekend, son?” I was nine and I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but everyone else did in the room and had a good old laugh at me. I asked my dad what it meant and I had one of those father and son “in the shed” meetings to discuss the matter. I was appalled by what it meant. It was…well…yucky.
So “A little something for the weekend?” holds special meaning to me—sort of…
Being from Wisconsin, I had no idea what that meant and had to Google it. No wonder you were appalled. At least it makes for a good story…
Somehow I missed the explanation of the code in the first paragraph. 🙁 Apparently I need to work on my reading comprehension skills.
We all need to work on our skills, Karen… 🙂
As a footnote, at the time, my dad thought this was funny. My mum didn’t.
I wondered about that when I watched Endeavour, and figured that’s what it was. Took a bit of cogitating…
Men have their codes. 🙂
Thanks for the code lesson. I had no idea – no need to know really, but am grateful to know. Now I understand a little bit more about “hump day” as well?
Sandie
Forewarned is forearmed…or something like that. 🙂