Neverwhere: Barnet Fair

 

Barnet is a famous and talented hairdresser in London below. She’s a plastic-fantastic lovely with an enormous and breathtaking beehive hairdo and the greatest in 60s fashion. She’s considered unapproachable to most in London Below, one of the great beauties of the whole underside around the world and a woman who is more interested in hair than men, women or… ‘misc’.

Lord Lepus of the down-on-its-luck Hare Court has his hopelessly romantic heart set upon Barnet even though she is completely out of his league. He has no wealth to speak of any longer, his nobility is diminished and his talent is really only for begging money, not for wooing. He’ll need help in a Cyrano de Bergerac style and that’s where the players come in. About all Lepus has left to trade is his small estate which may make a good basis for an ambitious group of characters looking to make a more permanent mark on the underside. He’s willing to give it up, if they can get him into Barnet’s good graces.

They may try any number of ways to get through to her for him, extolling his virtues, poetry, presents but really all Barnet cares about is hair and 60s fashion and getting something wonderful that fits in with those criteria is how they might get through to her. What would really, really, really win her over though would be reconciling her with her estranged and distant sister, Fair Barnet (or Barnet Fair). A woman as beautiful as Barnet herself but an avatar of the other half of the 1960s, the bare-foot, flowers in your hair, flowing golden natural locks and long, flowing dress type.

Barnet Fair left London below to go and live in Brighton, which has a small underside of its own. She lives in a beach hut, a permanent fixture of The Brighton Fringe and she is doted on and lusted after by Hove, a blue-skinned giant who spends his days hurling things back into the sea. Or just into the sea if he doesn’t like them. His love for Barnet Fair is unrequited and painful to him and he won’t want her to leave. Not that Barnet Fair wants to leave anyway. She and her sister had a terrible falling out in 1967 and she’s grown to hate her sister despite her hippy sensibilities, as only sisters can.

It’ll take a while and some heroic wooing attempts before Barnet will let slip about regretting falling out with Barnet Fair and only then can the characters try to bring Barnet Fair back and win over the lovely Barnet.

Of course, the problem then is that the fickle Lepus falls head over heels, immediately, for Barnet Fair.

Tch, men.

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Barnet is tall and beautiful, painfully sarcastic and extremely strong willed. Her tongue is extremely sharp and she is completely tactless, able to destroy someone’s self image with a single ill thought out remark. Her fingers are slender and extremely nimble and she is a legend of 

hairdressing and fashion, albeit with a tendency to the kitsch.

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Lord Lepus is a hopeless romantic and desperately poor. Despite this he knows he is blue-blooded and retains a small estate, even if it is run down. He still carries himself with noble bearing even though the only way he can keep himself going is through his mastery of high class panhandling. Lepus has a knack for jumping, up to fifty feet at a time.

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Hove is an enormous, massive, incredibly strong man, a brute with uncommon power and almost impervious to pain. A master brawler he has long been the guardian of Brighton’s underside and his accuracy and distance at throwing are legendary. Accurate to a fault when he does throw things, or people, he has the knack of the seven league throw.

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