Every time I go on holiday I return with a suntan, peeling skin on my legs, a bottle of some ‘local’ variety of rum/vodka/whisky, a sombrero (not after the Scotland trip, granted, bought a sporran, kept falling off me head) fifteen boxes of the locally grown tea/coffee/herbal shit/whatever that will never be consumed in the UK and will be summarily dumped, unopened 15 months later… and a beard.

I don’t understand it either. I do nothing and it just grows. As if by magic.

Maybe it has something to do with not shaving. You do da maff.

But shaving is a chore. Therefore, in holiday mode, I try and avoid the normal, certainly the mundane, the trivial, the unnecessary. So I don’t shave. Neither does Mel. Who never notices that I’ve grown a beard. Today’s ‘shadow’ is tomorrow’s stubble is the week hence’s beard. It sneaks up on her. Or maybe, familiarity just does breed contempt. And if nothing else, I have always been worthy of contempt.

Then back home, the first visit from the daughters, or ‘the beard police’ as they’re collectively known, brings a hail of ‘eeeuuwww, get rid of that beard. Its horrible. Its yeuchy. Makes you look old!!!’ They know precisely which buttons to push, my gels, bless ’em.

So I thought, oh well, I’ll shave it off. Then I opened the paper today. And realised that my beard could save my life!!!

Ok, overstating a touch, as ya do, but really it was there in black, white and wishful thinking. An article by a doctor, no less. And apparently they were examining beards in a lab, pretty much so they could slag them off as ‘dirty, unhygienic things’ like the guy in Roald Dahl’s ‘The Twits’. Full of rubbish, old food, snot, pollution, coke cans, old car tyres, broken fridges, all the usual. But what they found was that in among the multitude of bacteria contained in the beard (same as on an unbearded face, so don’t get smug, Ladies) there were indeed other, more beardy bacteria too. But they were good. They were healthy. They were even natural anti-biotics. Could fight infection. Save my life.

So the beard is staying. Even though its more ‘old rabbi’ than young hipster, I don’t care. If God had intended man to shave, he wouldn’t have set the price of razor blades so ridiculously high.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx