By Kate Edwards, BBC News: It’s a typical Saturday morning at the barbershop in the seaside town of Llandudno, in Wales.
The barber cuts the hair of some of the locals and then takes his time on a new customer.
He’s not going to cut the hair or comb the roots.
He doesn’t want to be seen as a jerk.
The customers are polite and respectful.
The hairdressing salon owner has to do it all himself, but it’s a pleasure for him.
He is also the customer.
His name is Sarah Banks.
Sarah Banks has been hairdo-shopping in the Welsh town of Borthwick since 2004.
“I started my business because I wanted to do my hair professionally,” she tells me.
“People thought it was a very old-fashioned thing to do and I thought, why not?”
I’m not an expert, but I do know what it is to have a job.
Sarah is a mother of four and a successful businesswoman who hauls in customers from the surrounding area, all of whom are from the same generation.
In 2008, Sarah moved her shop to the town of Owey.
“The old town was a bit like my old school and I would take people to the old town to do their hair and to shop, which was a lot,” she says.
“But the old towns people didn’t come back.
They were not going back to their old towns.
I thought that’s what I’d like to do now.”
I’ve had so many good customers over the years.
I love it, and I love my customers and I have a very good rapport with them.
“They’re my family, and they’ve been so nice.
They’ve always come to me with any problem or any suggestion and I’ve been able to work with them.”
I ask Sarah about the barber’s job.
She tells me that when people come in they say, ‘How can you do your hair at home?
You don’t have to do anything else. “
It’s a two-minute cut.
You don’t have to do anything else.
You can’t put it on. “
You can’t touch it because you’re a barbie.
You can’t put it on.
You put your hand in it and put it under the mirror.
I’ve done it in my shop for about 10 years.”
It’s not that she’s bad at it, Sarah admits.
She does her job well and does it very carefully, with a brush and a towel to get the hair just right.
But the customers are very friendly.
She says she gets up at 3.30am and the customers come in as soon as possible.
“Most people come back as early as 3.15am,” she adds.
She also has customers from all over the world, from America to China.
“Sometimes they come to Wales and we do a few weeks of work in the barbie shops and then they go home and they get their hair done at home,” Sarah says.
Sarah’s shop is called Borthwicks Hair Salon.
There’s a sign at the front of the shop that reads “The barber is your customer”.
It’s been running for 13 years, and she’s sold her share of the business to another barber, who she describes as a fellow barbie-owner.
The other barber has been in the business since 1997.
They’re both retired.
I ask what she makes of the idea that barbers don’t do it professionally.
Sarah says: “I’m not going into that.
The people who are barbers have had that experience, that’s why I do it.
I want to show people how to do that.”
Borthwaits barber John McManus says that he’s a barbeater himself.
He was born and bred in Wales and spent his early years in London and he says that if barbers in Wales didn’t do their work properly, then he wouldn’t have ever been able “to get that job”.
He says: I think that’s one of the reasons why I went out there and worked hard and got my barber license.
“That’s what barbers do.
He says he also has to go into the shop every day to do his job, and that’s just one reason why he doesn’t do his work in Wales: “If I didn’t have a barbec”
If you’re going to have an accident, or something bad happen, you have to take the barbecued steak and you have the hot food, and you’re not going in the shop for a haircut, that is the barbeau, you’re doing it in the office.”
He says he also has to go into the shop every day to do his job, and that’s just one reason why he doesn’t do his work in Wales: “If I didn’t have a barbec
