GER CANNING,
Madam, - There are times in life when we have to hold our hands up high and say "I got it wrong". I shouldn't have got my hair cut last Monday afternoon in a certain Cork hairdressing establishment.
The scenario was as follows. A customer was waiting quietly to have his hair cut, and I duly took my place on the bench close to the window alongside two teenagers and their father. There was hardly a murmur between them. They were, I later established, members of the Travelling community.
The middle-aged lady in the men's section told the two lads to go outside - I assumed to some other chairs.
I turned to their father and said that I was not in a hurry, once the first customer had been shorn of his locks.
He said the boys were not having a haircut. They had in fact been put outside the premises, where they engaged in very light-hearted banter, like that between my two teenage sons.
When their father had had his haircut and left, an assistant in the next room, the ladies' section, said to a customer: "Do you know something, they're a breed apart. No wonder that nobody wants to live next to them."
Next time I'm going elsewhere.
And there are those who wonder if the Irish are a tolerant people! - Yours, etc.,
GER CANNING,
Tivoli,
Cork.