To Beard, Or Not To Beard...? - Guest Post

[Following on from my last post Beards? Yes or No?! Twitter was on fire with beard appreciation. Granted there were some negative shout outs too but we are working on them! The lovely, and bearded, @owenhants has very kindly written a guest post for me giving us the story of his beard.]

I like my beard. Actually, I have just trimmed it. There is now not quite enough of it for small animals to hide in (and to be honest that particular thing was starting to annoy me), but enough for admiration, fondling or just  pointing and laughing.

I suppose I look okay with one because my dad had a full beard for some of of his 20s and most of his 30s. Indeed, my first flirtation with beardage was in my late teens. I had been on a college exchange trip to Germany and over that two weeks had got somewhat fed up with constantly getting my face cut by the crappy razors I had bought at the airport, so in the second week I didn't really bother.

Consequently when the German students came to stay I had shaped it into a neat little goatee that went nicely with my long-haired grungy look.

"Du hast einen Bart!" yelled one. "You are crazy!" said another. I wondered for a moment about sending them completely mental by saying that I had a piercing somewhere very intimate.

Since 2006 I have had a full beard. I had a job in a café for a while, and upon reading the food safety requirements for the job I was somewhat disturbed to find that I might be required to wear a "beard snood", which is essentially a hairnet for your face. I hadn't actually seen one but I can only imagine I would have looked very odd indeed. I got away with not wearing one in the end, luckily.

I've shaved it off a couple of times. Once because I just felt like it, and the second time because I accidentally took a chunk out of it on the wrong grade with my clippers. I think I look weird without my beard, and I know my wife doesn't like me clean shaven either. I know this because she says things like: "You look too young. I feel like I'm sleeping with a twelve year old" or, "You won't get served in the pub."

A cheery-looking old bloke with a rather impressively bushy moustache sat in the café once and watched me as I cleaned the tables. The next time I passed him he looked at me and said "you are Polish?". I smiled and said "no, English". He chuckled, twiddled his moustache and stroked his chin as if he had an imaginary beard. A couple of minutes later it dawned on me that for him my facial hair had marked me out as a compatriot. I had no idea that it was a requirement for Polish citizenship...

 So, to conclude: having a beard makes me crazy and a Pole, and makes me more desirable to my other half (and possibly to others). Not having one denies me access to booze and makes my wife worried that she is going to end up on the Sex Offenders' Register.

The beard is definitely staying.