A youngster in Glasgow, Scotland gets his haircut by his Ma while she dances to ‘Do The Hucklebuck’ on the radio in the kitchen. 

“I’ll have your eye out if you don’t stop fidgitin’!” 

“But Ma! It’s you that’s dancin’!”. 

The cutline starts off in a horizontal fashion then slips off course in a northwesterly direction, heading straight for the ceiling, finished off with the immortal phrase: 

“There! That’s better!”

Even the DJ on the radio remarked: 

“Ooooh! It’s a beauty!” 

Unbeknownst to Freaky Fringe Boy, there’s a young girl, 400 miles south of Glasgow, in Surrey, England sitting on a horse. Beside her, also on a horse is her Mum with a pair of scissors. 

“Sit still child!” 

“But Mum! Can you cut my hair when we get home and not at the Gymkhana?”  

“Hush Child!” 

She proceeds to cut the girls fringe whilst jumping over hurdles. While the girl is making up an image of her fringe looking like a shaky scribble of the Alps, her Mother finishes and says the immortal phrase: 

“There! That’s better!”

Even the horse remarked: 

“Ooooh! It’s a beauty!”

We shouldn’t be smiling in the photographic after-math of our fringe attacks, we should have the face of someone who thinks they’re getting a guitar for their birthday but turns out to be an itchy jumper wrapped around a  didgeridoo!

It would be two decades later that they would meet and ask each other: 

“When did you join The Freaky Fringe Club?” 

And it would be one decade later that Freaky Fringe Boy would ask Freaky Fringe Girl to marry him, and it would be 3 years later that they would induct their Son into the Freaky Fringe Club Hall Of Fame.

We took Jake to get his first proper haircut at a proper hairdressers and because we weren’t happy with the result,  I sharpened the scissors, opened another bottle of wine, turned up ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ by Nirvana and sorted out his fringe, finishing with the immortal phrase:                       

“There! That’s better!’

Even Jesse our dog, who doesn’t say much, remarked: 

“Oooh! It’s a beauty!”

The moral of the story?

Never cut someones fringe whilst dancing to Rock ’N’ Roll or riding a horse.

Is it history repeating itself? Or a subconscious act of freaky fringe revenge?