Friday, June 19, 2009

Scrape

I hate shaving.

For many years I hid behind facial hair, worried lest my boyish good looks somehow diminished my professional gravitas. Not only did this give passers-by the (entirely spurious) impression that I was someone of depth and probity like Grizzly Adams or Bakelite Smith's Uncle Arthur, it also spared me the daily morning ritual of leaving half my face and a good deal of blood in the sink before staggering out to work.

All good things must come to an end, alas. Overnight my beard went from dark, burnished splendour to tortoiseshell ginger and white. Colleagues at work sent me job adverts for Santa Claus at Xmas and one of the Branch Managers made a convincing case for my having been Edward VII's auntie. The facial hair had to go and I had to start shaving again.

Every so often I try to get away with it for a day or two. It's no use: you can't get away with designer stubble when your beard goes white. In the past, a bit of growth could lend me the rugged air of a Dickie Attenborough or Anna Neagle. Nowadays it just looks like my face has gone mouldy.

11 comments:

Madame DeFarge said...

Kevin - a mouldy face is the mark of a mature man. Rare creatures indeed.

savannah said...

*sigh* the MITM won't grow his beard back for the same reason and it saddens me. what's happened to all you darling men of a certain (and gorgeous) age? xoxox

Kevin Musgrove said...

One morning I looked in the mirror and wondered who was that old man and why was he eating an old mop?

Gareth Williams said...

Give it a few more years and you might settle into the wild, Old Testament prophet look. Now, that's something to look forward to!

fairyhedgehog said...

So there is an advantage to being a woman.

KAZ said...

Yes I get Dickie Atters and Anna Neagle confused as well.
She did a good job with Ghandi.

Tazeen said...

Ah
I have always wondered how awful it must be shave your face, day in, day out and always knew that if I were a man, I would be a bearded one...

getting old sucks, big time

xerxes said...

Kevin, honestly, get one of those vibrating razors, they're tons of fun. Gillette something or other. My scrotum now looks like it could belong to a cabin boy.

Kevin Musgrove said...

Inky: is that the one that David thingy advertises on the telly?

xerxes said...

I'm not sure about David Thingy, or the telly. The problem is that my attention span has ceased to exist, to the extent that telly-watching is insupportable.

Webrarian said...

So nice to find I'm not alone. Pure white, Dickie-style, looked so alluring but it wasn't to be.

It didn't help that Catherine at work asked me what I'd do if I had a beard in Cyprus then shaved it off once I got back home. "Won't it be all white underneath?" Life's complicated enough without having to worry about a partially-tanned face.