It could have been very different for Leo McGrail.

Instead of plying his trade with scissors for over five decades, he could well have been using a hammer and anvil instead.

Back in the sixties, at the age of 15, Leo had an after school and weekend job working with a blacksmith.

But he decided to instead take a different route and he never looked back.

Now after 55 years he is calling it a day. Perhaps a bit early but with the coronavirus pandemic causing havoc with everyday life, he felt like it was time.

Completing his apprenticeship on Belmore Street with Leo Campbell, the 72 year old was never without work after that.

“The mid 60s or early 60s there wasn’t much of anything happening so it was an opportunity to do something,” explained Leo.

“I had an afterschool job and a Saturday job and it was with a blacksmith and it was totally different altogether.

“I served my time in Belmore Street and then I went to Lisnaskea to do a week’s work for a man that had the flu, a barber by the name of John Teague. So I went there to do a week and wound up doing 14 years.

“I went back from that to the same shop I served my apprenticeship in and I did three years there and then I went up to the Diamond.”

And for 37 years Leo was a permanent fixture in the centre of Enniskillen where men’s hairstyles and the aesthetics of the town centre changed dramatically over the years.

“The styles weren’t that much unlike to what young ones are getting today. There would have been quite a bit of short, back and sides but there was a bit more too of Elvis and Tony Curtis, the big names of the day, and there was that kind of fashion which was a bit longer.

“And then of course in the mid 60s The Beatles came on the scene and by the time the 70s came it was a bad period. It put a lot of barbers out of business this wild look.

“By the time it hit the 80s it was good because it was wash, cut and blow-dry and men had started to take on a whole new fashion and interest in themselves.”

With hair styles somewhat coming full circle, Leo would have the younger generation asking him if he knew what they were on about, but of course he had seen it all before.

Back when Leo started, half a crown or 12p would have got you a haircut, and a couple of pounds would have been a good day but he knows how the times and prices have changed.

As well as the changes in hairstyle, Leo also remembers the evolution of the the Diamond area.

He saw Wellworths and Woolworths come and go. He remembers Water Street when it was a two way system. And at Christmas he could almost touch the Christmas tree if he stuck his hand out of the window of his barber shop.

Sometimes with all the work going on he felt like there was somebody out to stitch him up.

“Sometime I felt like that programme ‘You’ve been framed’.

“You’d go to do a wash and the water would be off and you would walk down Eden street and somebody would say you would have to go to John, he’s over at the back of The Vintage which is Granny Annies and you’d get to him and he would say the man responsible for that would be down at Castle Street and then you would have to walk all the way over there or get somebody to go for you.

“You’d often be midways thinking is someone filming you like an eejit.”

Leo was well known for his pipe, and before the smoking ban came into Northern Ireland would have been cutting away with a haze of smoke around him. After the ban he was forced to stand at the entrance to the barbers in between customers.

“It would have been when I was in Lisnaskea.

“You’d go out and you’d be hiding it, keep your two hands over it in case you got a slagging off for looking like an oul boy.

“Then as the years went on it became a thing people always associated with me.”

Leo will always be associated with the Diamond and now that he has retired he hopes there will be interest from a young barber to start a business in the town centre.

“There’s a long standing history of barbers at the Diamond.

“When I started there was a barber’s shop not long closed down where the beauticians is and he was a very well known man by the name of Billy Johnston.

“He was Lord Mayor as well as a local barber and Johnston’s Bridge is named after him.

“I was always disappointed they didn’t name a bridge after me,” joked Leo.

And now with the coronavirus pandemic bringing an end to his era, Leo can spend more time painting water colours, but his legacy will certainly live on.

“I would have kept going to get the 40 years but all good things come to an end,” he added.