“This Beard Is for Siobhan”

Walthamstow log: 24th April 2017:16:00hrs

We'd been told that the hipster tide had peaked and now was receding: leaving the flotsam and jetsam of funny beards, tweed waistcoats and brown brogues stranded on the High Street. In our Post Brexit, Pre Teresa Tyranny world we thought we were safe from newly opened artisan pizza parlours, craft beer outlets and hand baked slow raised rye and  bacterial leavening breads.

It was a false dawn; that hipster tide was simply taking a breather. It has found renewed vigour and is this very instant lapping against the portals of the Coidan household. I'm talking beards. I'm talking many beards, beards of all shapes and sizes. Fool that I was to believe that Good Ole King Gillette had vanquished the hirsute visages that had populated every TV screen, every style mag and high end hang out. Not at all.

In the good old days you were able to go into your local and find a place to lean against the bar and sup your pint with ample breathing space between you and the next imbiber. Not anymore. Now entering your local is like discovering that your horse hair mattress has sprung a leak. You can't turn around without finding yourself with a face full of someone else's beard. Our pub has banned frothy beer and the wringing out of beards more than once of an evening. Some evenings you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd happened upon a ZZTops' or Demon Hunter's Beard convention.

This beardiness is contagious: even those of us used to a regular wet shave with brush and soap bowl have been struck down by the beardy lurgy. I...have...grown...face fungus. I know, it took a lot to spit out that. I have a beard! It was an accident - honest. At the time I switched to a new shaving cream my face became sore. I thought it might be the change in routine so I stopped shaving and continued stopping until I had quite a face full of hair. I rather liked the badger white stripe down the middle of my chin - made me look grizzled but in a nice way.

The beard kept growing and I liked the extra 20 minutes in bed not shaving every morning gave me. The missus was quite restrained, only infrequently commenting on the remains of meals stuck in my beard or my passing resemblance to a walrus. I think it was last Friday at a neighbour's wedding reception at our local - the one infested with beards - I decided that something had to be done with my bewhiskered phizog. The bridegroom had had his brush trimmed and it looked quite fetching.

So this morning saw me popping along to Walthamstow's own "man shop" - The Cove to have a beard trimming. The missus thinks I now look quite respectable - which can't be bad can it?