Hirsute

Today

Beards seem to have been prominent over the last few days. My German cousin's husband, who sported a full beard at new year, just had a little drooping moustache when we saw him last week. He looked better for it, I thought, and told him so. "Oh," he replied "it's cooler this way; the beard'll be back in the winter."

Then, just a couple of days ago, I bumped into Roy, the musical director of the English Concert Singers. I had never seen him anything else than clean-shaven, so it was quite a surprise to see him sporting a venerable goatee-type grey beard. "Is this your Thomas Beecham look?" I joked. Actually, it looked very nice and well-groomed. Just not sure whether it will match his hair.

In My Day

Daddy, who in later years wore a moustache, disapproved of beards. At best they were a sign of suspect "artiness"; at worst a sign of complete disregard for respectable society and washing. How he reconciled this with his father-in-law's neat beard or the beards belonging to a whole range of his heroes, such as Sir Isaac Pitman, Sir Henry Wood and said Sir Thomas Beecham, I never fathomed.

Paul made several attempts to grow beards, often giving up at the stubble stage because he felt that it made him less attractive to the opposite sex. Eventually, in about 1982, he went the whole hog and grew a proper beard. It was very black and seemed to cover his whole face. I found it rather hard to make out his features or facial expressions and, after an emotional outburst, we agreed on a compromise. The beard stayed, but he shaved the area around the eyes and cheeks and just below the mouth so that I could identify him on a dark night.

He's basically hung onto this facial hair with only a couple of periods of time out, once when the sneezing of hay-fever became too much.

The other time followed his retirement in 1998. Several people had indicated that they thought he looked ready for retirement, when he was actually only forty-eight. "Do I look old?" he asked anxiously. "Well," I hazarded cautiously "your beard is very grey..." He rushed to the bathroom and shaved the lot off, an act which he instantly regretted.

Within two years he'd grown it back with the addition of some "Just for Men" and swears he'll never shave it off again.

I just hope that, with the advancing years, I will never have to decide whether or not to keep my beard.