A blog about my beard

I debated the title of this post for quite a while, knowing that it would bring me some serious mickey-taking.  In the end, what the hell.

Some of you may have noticed that I started growing a beard just before Christmas. It started off, frankly, from laziness.  Either I could spend an extra five minutes in bed, or I could shave.  It’s a no-brainer.  And after a while I decided to leave it and see what happened.  I could start a new job, in a new country, with new facial hair.  And I began to get rather attached to it.  It became a bit of a project.  My colleagues at Sumitomo even helped me out with a bottle of beard oil.  Really.

After a couple of weeks in Charleston, I decided the beard should have a bit of a tidy up.  So I booked an appointment at the Old South Barber Spa and popped out of the office at lunchtime, thinking I’d be back within half an hour or so.  It’s in an old, typical Charleston building downtown, with gas lamps burning outside and a small courtyard.  Though it was February and a little chilly, at least by Charleston standards, it’s easy to imagine the courtyard on a steamy summer day.  Inside, it’s a mass of dark wood and black leather.

I settled down in the chair for my quick haircut.  After 15 minutes, with a hot towel over my face, I thought my thirty minute target might have been optimistic.  Fifteen minutes and three hot towels later, and I was getting a little worried about how long I’d been away from my desk.  Forty-five minutes in: I was having oils massaged into my face.  I no longer cared about work.  Finally, after an hour, I had the finishing touches and emerged blinking into the sunlight.  A new man!

(picture borrowed from someone else’s blog – thanks)

Awesome as it was, I don’t think I can be going back to the Old South too often.  It feels like the sort of place you should save for a special occasion.  So, much more prosaically, I bought an electric shaver from CVS.  Coupled with my beard oil, this should help me replicate at least some of the barber’s handiwork.  Actually, she was called Danielle.