Shaving

[avevale_intelligencer]

So, a couple of weeks ago, I was cooking fried potatoes and I inadvertently dropped one from too great a height into the hot oil. Splatter, much ouchiness, and two (nearly empty, thank gods) packets of frozen veggies that were too defrosted by the time I'd finished with them to go back in the freezer. Frantic search for dressings (rule of life; any packet of plasters that you have not just bought will only have the tiny round this-goes-over-a-mosquito-bite-size ones left in it. Never fails) and eventual success. Two days later I thought to take the very large blister on my middle finger to the duty nurse at the surgery (I love my NHS) and let her dress it properly. Since then I have been trying not to get that finger (middle one, left hand, the one with the painful ganglion that I'm too much of a wimp to get sorted) wet, which has made all sorts of common household tasks interesting and some impossible, including shaving.

Dressing came off a couple of days ago. Mostly healed. Ho for the bathroom. I watered and gunged the fizzog, applied the razor, cleared two square inches of underbrush and SNAP! The razor clove itself in twain along the carefully designed weakest point. Handle in my hand going gently bzzz, blade and bit that holds the blade rocking in the cradle of the washbasin. Two square inches of half-shaved fuzz up by my left ear, the rest virgin wilderness, doubtless home to entire ecosystems. (Well, not really, unless you count those things they talk about on the Discovery Channels which infest us all and which I Do Not Want To Think About.)

I have now replaced the horrible product of planned obsolescence and rescued my face from thicket and thorn, and it occurred to me, while I was starting on the north forty, that I have really never seen the appeal of the moustache. I'm a binary sort of bloke these days; either I'm too knackered or depressed to shave and the beard grows where it will, or I'm in the zone and it all comes off. I have been known to rock the Master look in the past, but these days I tend to think "well, as long as I'm here..." and complete the deforestation.

But just to leave the mouthbrow...the itchiest part of the entire assemblage, unanimously voted Facial Hair Most Likely To Get In The Way Of Whatever You're Doing...gyehhh. No. I'd sooner go for the Amish-style chin-beard if I had to keep some of the fungus. As I said somewhere else, moustaches to me are like the sound of a saxophone; they anchor me in my father's generation. (I do know that moustaches were around in other times, as various kind souls pointed out, but that's the period I tend to think of.) And then you have to think about what shape to make it. Orwell's worrying pencil line just above the lip, the Hitler/Chaplin square, Poirot's extravagance (either the large and luxuriant one in the books or David Suchet's various tiny ones), Dali's armed-and-dangerous look; surely a moustache is like a Rorschach inkblot, revealing things about the psyche of the wearer that perhaps should not be shown to the public gaze. At least I'm sure it would be for me.

Not to disparage in any way the grooming choices of my readers. If your tash is the pride of your life and the crowning glory of your upper lip, by all means wear it with panache. It would be a dull world if we were all alike, and especially if we were all alike me.

But I am really glad I've got my face back.

Comments

[eintx.livejournal.com]

There are several words that come to my mind when I think of a world where everybody is alike you. Somehow "dull" is not among them! :)

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Grin!

Beards and moustaches ...

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

The only time I ever sported a 'tash was when I was at a particular point in sixth form, where beards were still not allowed, but a discreet 'tash was barely acceptable ... as soon as I left sixth form I grew a beard, and have only had one week since when I've been clean shaven (January 2011, when I started, and finished, job hunting)

I often have it really short though (and trimmed) so I've known people to not remember I have a beard and be surprised when it gets into full bloom :-)

And yes, "the Master" beard has been one I've done in the past ... never the Amish/Abraham Lincolnbeard and no tash though ... I don't think I've even tried the mutton chops (just clearing off the chin)

[howeird]

Why stop at the face? Logic would say if one wishes a truly clean-shaven look, one should also shave one's head. :-)

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Not my kind of logic.

[jahura.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a couple of things in there I didn't know about you! I'm glad your finger is healing!