Something About Hair-raising Adventures

Hath any man seen him at the barbers?

The kids in the Bellairs Corpus tend to go through many of the motions kids in real-life go through. They start and end their day at home. They go to school. They go to church. They go to camp. They go to grocery stores. They go to banks. They have run-ins with doctors. They play with their friends and meet these friends at soda fountains or sweet shops. They have habits. They have hobbies. Lord knows they read.

Why don’t they ever go to the barber?

Bellairs missed a fascinating subset of life in going to a place to sit, wait, reread magazines, and then have a one-off conversation as someone trims your hair. And what of this mysterious barber?

What if his abhorred shears actually belonged to Atropos, one of the Moirai, and there was a big hoopla before they fell into the hands of the enemy. Or maybe the barber secretly collects hair and designs wallpaper and curtains with strange designs of loops and ribbons and wavy lines resembling hairy abominations? Or did Mr Poynter do this already?