Movember is around the corner
Fighting men, writing men, learned men……all with beards. Except Einstein…..he did not have a beard, so he let his hair grow.
Men and their beards are topics of discussion that have been with us from the very earliest ages.
Back in the days of the Cavemen (bliss), that first sprouting of facial hair heralded the tiniest stirrings of young manhood, and was usually accompanied by sprouting somewhere else as well.
Behold the battalions of young men who stared in wonder at those magical little sprouts, struck by a frenzy of muttering (and praying to whatever deity managed the onrush of testosterone in those ancient days) as they stroked it in awe.
The more these adolescent body parts started to cover themselves in hair, the more pronounced the strut became. Weird little Confucian lengths of ropey dark tufts on chins became the epitome of Manhood, the Lord Testosterone and the Creator of all Manhood …”hey, bru…..daai baard kom aan, eh…?”
Then, Horror upon Increasing Horror – that one, non-negotiable bit of the beard, the Moustache, appears as a tiny little hairline crack upon the feverish upper lip.
Problem…!
No extra amount of growth down below, or on your chin, would ever make up for the lack of it upon the Upper Lip. That Moustache is the top rank of Facial Hair, the Field Marshal of all Beards. No beard is ever complete without a moustache, and most certainly not contemplatable with a naked upper lip. Good. About three millimetres into the beard you will start to go mad one millimetre at a time. This is the Scratch Phase. Terrible.
The Forming Phase will start a few millimetres later, with the scratching receding, and that great Peace and Quiet will settle upon your Countenance as your Viking phase (sic) takes hold. This is the face of Great Men the world over. Salient personalities with flowing beards have enriched our miserable little shaven lives for decades now.
Fighting men, writing men, learned men……all with beards. Except Einstein…..he did not have a beard, so he let his hair grow.
Good. You get all kinds of beards. There is the Great Hunter-John Dunne type, which is the forté of men like Peter van der Stok. If the Bowman would endeavour to grow a beard, he may have a problem. His Second World War Royal Air Force Squadron Leader moustache would not lend itself to a real beard, and his missus may just also veto this story. Then you have the AB De Villiers beard, which is seen more and more nowadays. A scratchy, Apache-style here and there fly-mattress of five o’clock shadows beard. No.
Then you have the Silver Six o’clock shadow like Carel Lauwrens. This is the developed phase of the Scratch Beard. Too much work on this one.
The best is left for last. The Boer General-Great Bear Hunter Beard, and is often compared with the John Dunne beard. We adherents of this great style of Facial Forest are still deciding on what to call it. Men like Saleem Docrat, Morgan Gregory and the like, proudly display these great pieces of art in town on a daily basis.
And the Bottom Line….that one great enemy of Yonder Face. The Razorblade. I personally hate shaving with a passion, and I know many others do, too Roll on Movember….!!
