Hair today

Today marked a milestone in my life. I’m officially in a new age bracket. No, you didn’t miss my birthday (HMV vouchers please), that’s next week - but today, I can hardly bring myself to say it…I had to shave ear hair.

I know. It’s effectively bus passes, tartan shopping bags on wheels and being dressed in a suit at 8.55am outside a post office from here on. And it’s crept up on me, the odd tickling sensation in the lugholes for a while and now this. Ambushed by hair follicles.

It’s nice to note how my hair has defined the ages of my life. My first shave was with a Remington microscreen that my brother won in a fruit machine. Yes, for a while you could choose a jackpot prize of £6 or an electric razor. I didn’t make that up. I remember him saying, in a rather doom laden accent to me ‘if you shave today…then you’ll have to shave every day from now on’.

And so it was, despite the fact that said microscreen was about as effective as rubbing a tortoise over your cheeks (that sounds wrong). It was a good job that my face was nowhere near as hairy as my brother’s belly – I swear he’s part Ewok.

I then took to shaving with a proper blade when I got to university because I felt it made me grown up. That and it made me look like I’d been attacked with a knife. My first forays in to wet shaving were akin to a Saw film and I soon learned that aftershave not only made me smell nicer, but could lay me out unconscious when it hit the various cuts and grazes in my bumpy old face.

Over the years my skin hasn’t really got any better, to the point where the line on my neck where the stubble ends and the neck continues has become so distinct I appear to have had my head stitched on by Dr Frankenstein. And now the hair needs to be removed from the ears and well as the nose (oh, that happened in the late 1990’s) to make me look vaguely human, the humiliation is complete.

Of course, the fact I still have hair is of massive comfort – but I swear as it comes out of more places in my head it’s probably because it’s going to go from the top of the noggin in the first place like some playdough man in reverse.

Farewell friends

Goodbye. Sayonara. This is the end. Ta ra. All the best.

No, I'm not dying. Besides which, if I was none of those would be my final words, I'd much rather go with "The treasure is in the...urgh", much more fun.

Recently I've said quite a few goodbyes. I changed jobs. We moved house. I swapped my brain into that of a robot before my body was disintegrated. Hang on, that last one was a film, sorry.

So I decided that the time had also come for the semi-regular facebook cull. You know, where you actually look at the people you are connected to and ask the question "Who the?".

I think I was inspired when I was de-friended by someone who I used to work with. I say someone, more one of the biggest cows I've ever met in my life (ooh, get me). Seriously, enormous cow of a woman. So big I think Cravendale and Nesquik had shares in her. Anyway, we had been 'friends' for 18 months and I have no idea why. Politeness I guess.

I think I have a politeness about us these days that influences our behaviour. No matter who it is, I end up having a conversation in my head like this

"Ah, Hitler has sent me a friend request again. Can I really ignore him again. He'll know that i'm stalling and start thinking bad of me. Oh, maybe I should just accept and then limit his status updates. Besides which, he's been quite quiet since the 40's."

Or sometimes it's the people you've met for less than 2 minutes that you become friends with. If the ticket inspector from the train I went on last week sent me a friend request I think I'd have to accept, again out of politeness.

So no more. I've been brutal. I've culled all over the place.

10% of 'friends' have gone for a variety of reasons. There's the ones who never update their status (i'm pretty sure one of them is dead), there's the one who regularly posts 70's racist style comments, the people I've never actually met, the odd psycho, or the one who beat me up at school when I was 5 (did I really think 30 years ago "I hope I'm still in touch with him in three decades).

So if you're reading this, it's likely that you've followed the facebook link and that you have been saved from the cull. You can consider yourself fortunate or unfortunate, that's up to you.

Of course that might just inspire you to get rid of me. If so, goodbye. Sayonara. This is the end. Ta ra. All the best.