CAVANMAN'S DIARY: 'It's slowly starting to grow on me'
Paul Fitzpatrick
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Cabinman’s Diary. This lockdown does strange things to people, especially columnists, high on boredom and low on inspiration.
It’s hard to find something to write about when you rarely leave the house or meet anyone face-to-face. There is only so much Netflix you can watch, so many times, the lawn can be mowed. I’ve found my whole routine is disrupted.
That, I suppose, explains how I came to the decision just over two weeks ago to stop shaving. I’d like to say that it was some grand gesture of solidarity with frontline workers or a protest against something or other but that would be a lie. The truth is, I stopped out of laziness – and I am continuing now out of curiosity.
It’s not, you understand, that I shave all that often – I am, shall we say, follicly challenged around the whole chin area and have been the butt of a lot of jokes for it over the years. Believe me, I am not exaggerating when I say that a packet of razor blades lasts me months.
Now, this lack of facial hear was not really a problem until I hit my mid-20s, although it had come to my attention before then that my beard game was not up to much.
In school, most fellas were a little self-conscious about starting to sprout some facial hear - you know what lads are like at that age – and that was when I first began to grasp the extent of my problem.
By the time I was 14 or so, I was sporting a sort of Worzel Gummidge look, long straggly straw-like whiskers, spaced out evenly enough, with two slightly thicker tufts each side of the chin (note, that was singular back then).
The dilemma than was whether or not to shave this thing off. The risk was that I might incur the wrath of my friends if they copped I was shaving, trying to be the dreaded “big man”.
Luckily, the decision was taken out of my hands. In PE one day, on the soccer courts, my friend Shane McHugh strolled over. “Moe, go and shave will ya,” he demanded, catching me on the hop. I tried to take it in my stride.
“Do you reckon I should?” I replied, rubbing the offending plumage ostentatiously.
“Just shave it off, that thing is ridiculous,” he said. And at that, the ball came our way and the conversation ended. Of course, McHugh – who was probably the most mature of us – was right. I later heard Shane, fair play to him, was a sort of teenage beard watchdog and had told a few of the other lads in our class to break out the old Gillette.
So that weekend, I got my hands on a Mach 3 razor and went to work. The only problem was, there was a storm that night and in the middle of the job, the electricity cut out.
Not to be deterred, I continued by candlelight. My first shave complete, my upper lip cut to ribbons, I slapped on some balm and away I went, content that I was now a man.
Over time, I expected the beard to thicken. But it didn’t – or if it did, it was barely noticeable. Throughout my teens, one shave a week did the trick. As I grew older, the odd time I’d attempt to let it grow a little bit longer and see what happened, intrigued as to how this thing would play out.
And that’s when the slagging would start.
“A rough cloth would take that off,” is one line I used to hear. “Slap some milk on your face and let the cat lick it off,” was another.
So, some time around the age of 21 I decided finally that I could not grow a beard and never would be able to, so I’d make sure to shave fairly regularly to avoid the inevitable embarrassment of looking like an out-of-shape 1970s east German female shot-putter.
As my ill-luck would have it, though, around that time, beards became fashionable, a trend I had not seen coming, No longer were they the preserve of creepy old-timers, hipsters or deranged recluses. Now, everyone seemed to have one and those young men amongst us without a beard were missing out, big time.
Once or twice, then, I tried to give it a go and let things roll on past the clean-shaven stage (day three), beyond what I call the even stubble phase (approximately day five, depending on the time of year) and on to the one-week marker.
By the time I passed that milestone, I found I had developed a fine coat of what can only be described as fluff, mostly blonde in colour and patchy in nature. The tache was always the crowning glory – think Barry McGuigan in his 1980s heyday, only a lot lighter and a fair bit reedier.
Invariably, I would then come to my senses and get rid of it – there would be a work meeting or a social gathering coming up and it would have to go.
And then, it happened. The lockdown commenced a few weeks ago and soon, the world as we know it, and my chin as I know it also, changed. I was due my weekly shave last Thursday. With nowhere to go and no-one to meet there, I put it off.
The days ticked by and I started to become curious. What will happen if I leave this thing for a fortnight? A month?
I have now reached day 15 and, to be honest, progress is slow. My good wife doesn’t seem to have noticed much difference.
Yesterday, I examined my foliage in the mirror and was pleased with how it had come on, marking down a lower than expected score in the Fluff Factor column. In certain lights, with my head tilted at a precise angle, it isn’t too bad, I started to think.
When herself came in from work, I said nothing and yet she greeted me as normal.
“Notice anything different?” I asked coyly, examining my fingernails.
“No?” she replied.
“Around my chin?” I asked, slightly desperately.
“Oh yeah,” she said, narrowing her eyes to as to scrutinise me more closely and adopting a sympathetic tone. “You’ve a bit of five o’clock shadow.”
Talk about a hammer blow. I slunk back into the living room and pondered my next move. I decided I would just have to try twice as hard.
Alas, this morning, Day 15, there was little difference and I briefly considered abandoning the whole idea but I’m in this for the long haul now. As the days go by, you could say, it’s starting to grow on me...