There was a lot of joking, a lot of reason for it, a lot of skill, a lot of magic and a lot of sweat on Saturday [16th March] at Inveraray Fire Station.
The crew at the station climbed the Perthshire munro, Schiehallion, for charity and without leaving the station. Six hardy souls – the 7th was playing for Invereray Shinty Team [we heard later he'd been sent off] – climbed in relay the 13.5 metre tower at the station until they had competed the 1083 metres height of the mountain.
Their heads were cold under the hard hats as,immediately beforehand, they had, in turn, been at the centre of great communal jollity as they publicly had their heads shaved outside the Fire Station – in some rain – while others feasted on tea and home baked goodies inside.
The firemen’s full-hearted initiative was targeted on raising funds for the Schiehallion Ward of Glasgow’s Yorkhill Hospital for Sick Children.
Rosie Blyth, a young local girl, has spent long periods of time in that ward since December 2012, when she was found to be suffering from leukaemia – so the head shaving, the Schiehallion climb, the teas, the bake sale and the raffle were done to raise the funds in her name.
Rosie was there, chirpy in a bright flare of a hat as her father, Paul Blyth, offered himself to the shaver of the skillful Svetlana as the first to join Rosie in a temporarily smooth-headed team.
Laura Blyth, Rosie’s mother, looked on with interest as a different husband emerged from the clippers.
The two fire crew behind her, in their bright shave-victim shirts, may have been smiling then but their time was coming.
Richard Polanski from Furnace took on a second set of clippers, rubbing the noses of his victims in what he was about to do to them by working a massive wooly black wig.
Side by side, a succession of pairs of willing heads offered themselves for shearing.
There were cries of mischief and encouragement from the many and gleeful onlookers from: ‘Another tenner if you take off the beard as well’, to ‘Go on A tenner for the eyebrows’. The first of these usually met with success. The second enticement was a different story although one imaginative participant [Spock] talked Svetlana into taking alternative sections of his eyebrow out, creating a fetching vertical stripe effect.
Actually, the shaving of the heads was quite magical. While there was hilarity all round – and a merciless flotilla of phone cameras – those at the centre sat quietly, with no idea what their essential sculpture was revealing.
To a man, what emerged was quite beautiful. The shorn became the reborn.
Some of them chose to have guards on the clippers, some left injury to chance – none had reason to regret their decision. Each of the subjects spent some time in their own world, in the midst of the mayhem.
Colin Cameron, Editor of the Dunoon Observer and there to cover the event, quietly slid into the shearing chair at the end and joined the collective of fund raisers. Total respect.
Throughout all the carry on, a squad of Rosie’s Blyth’s young friends toured the crowd with bright bowls, to shouts of ‘Tell them you take nothing less than brown notes.’
There were sheaves of such notes – and fortunately no wind when one little collector tripped and dropped her bowl. One of the fire station crew, setting her upright, got the priorities right at once saying to the upset youngster: ‘It’s only the money’.
It was all compulsive viewing.
And compulsive snapping.
Face after face was revealed.
Local friends and supporters went for it, unafraid.
And enjoyed it.
Some wondered what the camera might catch.
Some were oblivious.
Richard Polanski offered himself up to the clippers in the hands of his wife Elaine – who exercised the power with remarkable restraint.
Some wondered what others could see that they couldn’t – it was all good.
And the beard below was one that went for an extra tenner.
Then there was the climbing. Each man took on the ladder something like 20 times . We understand they conquered Schiehallion in something like 2 hours.
They raised an astonishing amount of money – £4,800 at the last tally this morning – and it’s still coming in. This includes around £300 that The George Hotel raised for the event in a whip round in the bar last night.
This was an extended community coming together in open-hearted generosity and a sense of fun, in hard financial times to show how much they care for sick children and their parents – inspirational stufd and a shed load of new faces around Inveraray.
