Cutting Costs

We’re off to New Zealand tomorrow for a holiday on the North Island. It dawned on me that it will be the first time I’ve been outside Australia since I arrived here four years ago. Luckily, I’ve remembered I need my passport – as you can spend hours in planes here without leaving the country, I’ve got used to travelling without one.

I went for a pre-holiday haircut at my usual down-to-earth barber shop to find that Mike, who used to ply his trade in the basement of the BBC’s Bush House in London, had installed an innovation – surfing films on a flat-screen television – to counter the competition from a new “sports hairdresser” (what does that mean?) who has set up in the shopping centre.

I don’t think he needs to do anything else as there were four of us in the queue ooh-ing and ah-ing. There’s a man who knows his market.