Sean is at the cutting edge of Cootehill life

INSIDE STORY: For seven decades the gentlemen of Cootehill and beyond have been heading to SEAN FOY to get their hair cut. The barber kindly gave the Celt’s THOMAS LYONS a short back and sides whilst recalling a protest over the price of haircuts, the best decision he ever made, and why he didn’t think the Beatles weren’t so fab. 

Clip, clip, snip, snip, Sean Foy pauses and holds up his scissors like an exclamation point, the pause is for dramatic effect and is paced as perfectly as a practised stage actor, he then delivers the line: “I started my apprenticeship in 1944,” and with that he is off.
This is not the opening of a soliloquy, it is part of a dialogue in which he is drawing the other person into the conversation. Seventy years of cutting hair means that the mechanics of his occupation are second nature. His dexterity and surety of movement is that of a man thirty years his junior, indeed there is little about Sean Foy to suggest he is an octogenarian.
His craft is in two separate skills, the first is the deft manoeuvring of stainless steel scissors, comb and wrist, the second is in his conversation: “You left school at 14 at that time. I did three weeks in the Tech, I left because I thought I knew more than the teachers. They were teaching me to paint and measure timber and I had no interest in that. Then I was helping on a farm, I helped on the buildings and in a pub and a butcher shop. The butcher's brother was a barber and he asked me to sweep the floor. He said, 'Do you like this?' and he gave me 2s 6d (a half crown or two shillings and six pence) for my evening and I thought: this is it! I was then looking for the two and six every day after that, but it was my weekly wage. I never thought of doing anything else, I loved it.”
And so Sean embarked on his 70 year career: “Michael McCoy Barber Main Street, Cootehill, but we started off on Cavan Street. Haircuts at the time were six pennies. It was done with hand clippers. A shave was with a cut throat razor and soap. I've been asked about the cut throat shaves a couple of times in the last two years,” Sean says; that cycle of trends is a thread that runs through our conversation.
“Long ago I was shaving 40 people of a Saturday. There were no safety razors when I started, only cut throats. A lot of elderly people could not use cut throats, so they would go to the barbers for a shave on the Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The ones that could afford it. The shave was three pennies and I was getting a weekly wage of two shillings and six pennies, but I was fed.”
The soundtrack to the conversation is the metronomic clip-clip of the scissors. At this stage Sean is running what looks like a giant afro-comb through my hair, I'm not in the least curious to its function as I am totally engaged in the picture he is drawing of Cootehill in the late 1940s until he says: “You never seen anyone use one of those before?” and he is right. “My son gave me that thirty years ago, it is for cutting the flat top,” and this starts a conversation on the technology.
“That is the hand clippers I started with,” he says holding up a primitive looking device, “the hand clipper and the scissors were all you had, a fine one and a course one. From nine o'clock on a Saturday morning to twelve or one that night - that was the day's work. I got better and better at it and I loved it at the time. Most days it was from nine in the morning to eight in the evening, with a half day on Tuesday, but you would keep going on a Saturday until they stopped coming in.”

First tip
Sean's conversational style draws a picture of a Cootehill populated by people out of the From the Archive pages of the Celt. The sepia tinged stories harking back to the 1940s speak of another world: “On Saturday night they would be coming in with a few drinks on them and you would get the very odd tip. The very first tip I got was two pennies. A man came home from Scotland and he had change in his pocket and gave me two pennies for a tip. I was able to go to the ice cream parlour down the town, Mulligans, and get a fruit ice. That was fruit with ice cream and cordial squirted over it.
'How is that looking now?” he says as he flourishes a hand across the top of my head like a magician revealing the rabbit. “This is going to be expensive.”
I laugh, nervous that it may not be joke, not sure if I have the six pennies on me.
Snip, snip the soundtrack continues: “Country people would not come into the town until late on a Saturday evening. There would be a line of bicycles up the footpaths all around the town. They would do their shopping, some would go to the cinema, to the films, then the butchers and last the barber. The later you got shaved on a Saturday night then the fresher you would look on a Sunday, for Mass. Everyone went to Mass at that time, not like today. There was great craic in it. Shur some would be half cut in it on a Saturday night.”

Frozen blue
Of course the world turns and in its spinning, things change: “The electric clippers and the safety razor came in the mid to late 50s. It went from shaving all day on a Saturday to cutting hair all day on a Saturday. A lot of people could not afford to come into town too often to get their hair cut. They would come in on a fair day once a year or that. Some old farmers would come in once a month for a shave, and that was some job I'll tell you. I remember boys who had been sitting on a cart coming in, frozen, blue in the face. There was no electric kettles or anything to warm water and trying to put soap on them and getting three pennies for it,” the usual five minute shave stretching to seven, eight or even ten minutes.
“At the haircutting there they used to be timing me there on Saturday night, on a grandfather clock. They would say, 'You are more than five minutes with that fellow there', not like what I am giving you here today. This is turning out lovely,” he says as he sets the electric razor abuzz. I'm not sure it is the paucity of hair or the quality of conversation that is extending the duration of my cut.
“The haircuts have changed a lot over the time. When I started it was all short back and sides. Brilliantine was on the go at that time, four pennies for a bottle. Guys would buy a bottle before they went into a dance and put the whole lot in their hair. It was lovely and greasy and the girls liked it. But I think the electric razor was the next thing that brought about change, 90% of the people who come in today use an electric razor.”
Trends come and go, but adaptability is the key in seven decades of labour.
“I made my name with crew cuts,' Sean says. 'After the crew cuts was the Elvis cut, where they would put lacquers in the hair. I remember an article in the Monaghan Argus where people arranged a parade protesting of the raising of the price of a barber's haircut going up from 10d to a shilling and the sergeant of the guards in Monaghan town lead the parade. That was in the mid '50s.”
The business has not entirely been about removing hair. The barber branched out at one stage, as a wig supplier with the wonderfully named, 'The Crown Topper'.
“I had an agency for The Crown Topper. I won the top sales person in the British Isles for it. There was a big demand for them - until they found out what they looked like,” he laughs.

Front page
This particular exposé is not the first time Sean has graced the pages of his local newspaper, he tells us.
“I am waiting since 1957 when I first had my name in the Celt to get on the front page. I was in there about the Cootehill Club, I was secretary of the club when they won the County Juvenile league.”
The piece remarks that the club's success was due to Mr Foy's “enthusiasm and hard work”, and we all know that if it is in the Celt then it must be true.
Sean's endeavours outside of work are as extensive as the number of years he has put in under the candy striped pole.
“I became trainer of the U16 in '57 and won the championship in the first year, then won the minor championship the next year.” This was a start of a series of wins at minor. However his ascension to management was not exactly calculated.
“I was shoved into it. I played, but I was never a footballer. When there was nobody there I got my place. There was one day I got my place, the chairman at the time said, 'Foy there, get ready.' So I stripped down and was out on the field puffed up parading in front of the girls and the next thing was I heard a shout, 'The car is after landing from Dublin,' and I was back off.”
His exploits in the boxing ring were a little more auspicious, however his brother managed to out perform him by winning an All Ireland boxing title. His next sporting passion was golf, and his dedication saw him bring his handicap down to an impressive seven: “I don't play it much now. A lot of my friends and customers are all gone. I was the captain of Clones Golf Club in 1983, was also a member of Cavan Golf Club.”

Lean times
Returning to our discussion on hair, the 86-year-old says that four Liverpudlians with mop-tops had a huge influence on his profession.
“The Beatles got the curse of every barber in the world. They put half of the barbers in the world out of business. That was 1962 and it was lean times from that until the end of the 80s. I remember reading at that time that hairstyling was coming into vogue. Hairstyling is what I did for you there,” and again I have a mooch around in my pocket to see if I have a spare 10p.
Cootehill has changed a lot since the Cavan Road barber took up his apprenticeship. 
“It is sad to look at the town today. Of all the little shops and businesses that were in the town, fifty per cent have closed down, with the super-dooper big guys coming in and putting them out of business. The pubs seem to be picking up again since I stopped drinking. The pubs are doing business because it is the done thing to have birthday parties in them. Most of them don't open during the day.”
He is quick off the mark when asked about his best decision of the last seventy years: “Meeting the wife was the highlight of the career. I married her in 1954, that is 53 years married. The people of the town often wonder how she stayed with me. I was involved in everything: meeting in the golf club, meeting in the football club, game of darts, cards or rings. But that was my best decision.”
Sean Foy is officially poised to enter into his eighth decade as a professional coiffeur on July 12. A remarkable achievement for a remarkable man.