I was beginning to look like a zombie apocalypse survivor, wild of hair and eye in dirty holey jeans and combat jacket. My hair seems to be growing faster these days, must be a hormone thing.
It’s best to deal with these things in stages so I decided on the beard first. I stood there in front of the mirror looking at my chin like like a footballer sizing up the penalty that would bring him the trophy and all the glory that comes with it, except I’m old, fat and more intelligent.
I looked up, down, left and right, grinned, pursed, stretched and grimaced before introducing (it’s the right word, I checked) the beard trimmer to its mighty task of strands in faded brown and purest white. The first pass slowed the blades alarmingly, but it was a clean sweep nonetheless – success.
It’s an old tool, but I like it, I’ve tried newer versions but I’ve never found them as easy to wield. It has many plastic parts, and I suppose they do wear quicker than metal, but in all the years I’ve had it it’s never even blinked never mind failed.
Set to “4” for my chin, the second pass began. The hair is long and wiry, the battery weakened by overwork, the plastic-blade guard worn from countless adjustment and removal for cleaning, the hand that guided it was eager to be done and to feel young again. Under that much pressure something had to give, it just had too.
The blade-guard slipped down to “1” and the second pass dug a trough down to the skin like Superman’s space travel pod crashing into a Smallville field coincedentally close to Glenn Ford’s truck.
I pointlessly reset the trimmer to 4 and looked ashen faced at the damage. No way was I hiding that, I looked like a bus with a wheelie bin thrown through it’s windscreen, folk would notice. They only way was to chip out the rest of the broken glass and pretend that’s the way I like it: alfresco.
I slowly returned my engine of destruction back to 1 and set about clearing the whole site until nothing was left standing. I leaned on the edge of the sink with both hands and leaned into the mirror, I raised my face to look myself in the eye. Bloody hell, I look like a pink potato.
Brilliant!
I had the same trauma a couple of months back. I initially grew some very sad stubble in an attempt to look grown up (nobody ever believed my age) but that was ten years ago. Inspired by a recent haircut I thought I could literally shave off ten years and astound people with my youthful good looks. I was excited. I was mistaken. Looking in the mirror I saw a face shaped bowl of cold lumpy porridge looking back at me. I still have nightmares.
Oh man, laughing so hard! I remember doing this to my head, taking the plastic guard off for some mid-shave cleaning and forgetting to put it back on. I remembered the guard about two seconds later as my hand moved over my head, revealing a 2 inch wide reverse mohican.
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A couple of days on and it’s looking better. Oddly, with more hair on the top half of my head I look upside down.
Happy that my trauma has some empathy out there from previous experience.
That made me laugh out loud, superb. I’m right there with you, I had a beard for 15 years, and had a very similar incident with a trimmer that left an almost bald strip down one cheek. The beard had to go, and I have a face that was brown at the top half and milk-bottle-white on the bottom. I looked like an upside down pint of guiness. I’ve been tempted to grow it back but a few weekend trips have revealed it’s mostly grey now, so I’ll end up looking like Bob Harris.
Reminds me when an old beard trimmer simply gave up the ghost part way through and would only let go of the remaining facial hair after several minutes of painful ‘surgery’.
A grey beard does have its uses though Michael – junior consultants employed by clients now think twice before demonstrating their lack of experience by telling me how to do things…
Did the same to an eyebrow not a few months back… easily done.
Now isn’t that better really?. Admit it, you only grew it to save the weight of a shaver in your backpack – I mean, why else would anyone tolerate a face like a loo brush?.
Or is it that Scotsmen only feel ‘ard when they’re hairy?.
Electric shavers are great. I remember in my younger days using BIC orange disposable razors, guaranteed blood bath every time.
Had a sort of reverse experience once, usually use an electric hair trimmer with those clip-on depth guages to do my hair.
One day thought it’d be easier to use the beard trimmer, so set it to the usual number (4 I think it was)……… Nooooo!!, the numbers don’t correspond, beard trimmer much shorter, scalped myself. Made out I’d done it cause the weather was hot!!
Ah, so much suffering, women just don’t understand :o)
Long time since I’ve had a wet shave, I bet if would feel nice aftre the blood stopped flowing. I might actually try that you know.
How to define the beard thing for Geoff? There are two groups of people in this world and a beard helps us to distinguish ourselves from each other in order to avoid confusion. On one side we have men, and men have beards. On the other side we have smooth faced people, these are ladies and men who work for the Disney Corporation.
I’d like the announce that the hair is now shaved too. I look all wrong, kinda pale and wabbit.
A wet shave might feel nice but on no account attempt such madness. I assure you the bottom half of your face will have the complexion of Darth Vader when he took his helmet off in Return Of The Jedi.
Also Geoff a Scotsman would never drop the H from the word hard. That’s how hard we are.
And when spoken by a Scotsman, Hard has at least 5 r’s in it.
I took a mole off my neck wet shaving once. It wasn’t a happy event.
Funny, I look every inch the regular 40+ bloke at the moment with my top and bottom trimmed head and purple Nike baeball boots and tonight was the night a bass player turned up at the studio to see about joining “the band”. A boy in his twenties with properly long hair and a huge beard. I have rarely felt so, I dunno, faded? Still, he liiked the sound of it and he’s coming in to jam and see how it goes. If it does go well I might actually gig for the first time in, oh, too many years to think about.
Never mind my voice, wil my knees take a gig?
if you are doing a gig, chuck us a mail and I’ll come along
Will do, if it does happen I reckon it’ll only be the aftermath that’s on here.
What’s happening?! The site’s gone all white?!
Aye, I get emails from folk about the white lettering, so I’ve made it all reversed so that when I change it back folm will know when they were well off :o)
Now to find how to make the comment lettering white…