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