Village Voice August/September 2013 | Page 13

JOHN BARRETT There was a huge turnout for the peripatetic barber, who died in June. Born in Bighton, he lived all his life in Old Alresford. John Sargent gave this address at his funeral. Some people become astronauts, some sit on the Buttercross with a dog and a can of beer, and the rest of us try to get on with our lives, and make ourselves useful. John Barrett was just such a man. If he was sitting here he would say "Why are you making all this fuss?" In 1947, like me, he was Bighton born and bred, although as one long-time resident said, "...he was from the other end of the village - the posh end." He was one of five, Jennifer, Michael (now in Gibraltar), John, Richard and Robert. He went to school in the Dean and then to Perins, and after leaving school, learnt his trade with Pit Burchitt and Roy Howard in East Street. He wasn't exactly wild as a youth, but he got about on a motorcycle or in a beaten-up car with Jimmy Valler, John Rogers, Peter Ball and John Warwick. He was a regular weekend visitor to the Nurses’ Home at the County Hospital with Eddie Dedman and they used then to go down to Nurses’ Homes in Bournemouth and even Plymouth. I don't know what this said about nurses but it said a lot about John and Eddie! John Warwick shot him with an air gun and he promptly fell out of the tree, bearing the scars all his life. A kind and gentle man, he married briefly in his twenties, with two children, Mark and Michelle. He met Irene in 1976 in a dance hall in Portsmouth. Both very good-looking, they made, and have made for almost 40 years, a great couple; he the Barber, she a Fire Eater, and they would bat up and down the motorway to gigs, eating their sandwiches and sharing the fun. They got married in black (he with his hair in rollers the night before) with daughter Melissa and baby Damien, their son, in attendance, and Irene has been a constant support and loving wife ever since, despite her own considerable disability. Indeed, they truly looked after each other. For 50 years he was John the Barber, with a sure touch and uncommon skill, and as such, became a great source of local information. (Never gossip; I never heard him say an unkind word.) He laughed a lot, the life and soul of the party, and loved fishing, gardening, cooking and football, and they acted as adopted parents to Sean, then in the Children’s Home across the way. He was a Parish Councillor and did the fireworks with Damien and Gill Francis. John Sargent INFORMATION CENTRES WHATEVER YOUR QUESTION ABOUT PUBLIC SERVICES IN HAMPSHIRE WHY NOT CONTACT US ON OUR FREE HELPLINE? 0800 028 0888 Email: [email protected] Textphone: 0808 100 2484 (for customers with hearing or speech difficulties) SMS TEXT Messaging: 07797 877 010 www.hants.gov.uk/info 11