The day my beard started to fall out!

Today was to be a treat. A visit to the the Black Country Living Museum. It started well, car filled, tyres checked and then the satnav stuck its oar in! I knew I wanted to be on the M69 the satnav had other ideas. In the end I won, whoever holds the wheel will always win. We arrived, one packet of wine gums down and in need of coffee and food. Having got comfortable we began to tour the museum. At first the overwhelming impression was where did all these school children come from and where did all these old people come from? Not difficult to spot the the self blindness there then. Rather than talk you round the dark, coal dusted industrial environment in which we played “I remember my grandparents having that, doing this, smoking those” I’ve included a few photographs.

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Not everything is industrial, there are shops to.

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Of course there is a pub

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and domestic life.

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Time for coffee and the revelation

After a while we are ready for another cup of coffee and a snack so we wander over to the canal and tunnels society centre. Sitting on the balcony with a can of coke and jumbo sauceage roll I look out over the canal boats and the forges and remember that Peaky Blinders is partly filmed in this location. I am thoughtful and stroke my beard as I tend to do when I am roaming around in side my head and living in that grey world between being in the here and now and peeping into the unconscious that tends to surface now and then. I look at my hand and I am taken aback at the number of beard hairs that are on my hand. I stroke again and there again is a tuftette of hair. The more I stroke the more I become aware that I am losing my beard. Fuck. I thought I had got away with it, having had the number two on my head and not noticed any shedding I thought I had dodged the hair loss. My beard has let me down is my first thought, stupid, but there you go. Its the sense of dissappointment that gets to me. Another unwanted message of how real this cancer and chemotherapy is.

Of course the question is what do I do. Shave I hear you yell but like so many men my age my beard is not there by accident. As we men age we get the dreaded throat sag and so we respond by growing a beard to hide our turkey like necks. So its vanity and that denial of age that tells us that a beard is a good idea. After all it makes us look mature and manly when we know we are on the wane. So I shall not shave myself clean, I shall go for rugged stubble. At some point soon I shall emerge from the bathroom sporting as good as I can get groomed stubble. I will see how it goes, but if I end up looking like I have mange then clean shaven it will have to be.

With the moulting beard I had thoughts about whether the hair on my head would go soon. With winter coming that could be cold. My solution? I am now the proud owner of a heavy weave Peaky Blinders cap. Should look good with the biker jacket.

Tomorrow we are going to Pure Land a Budist meditation centre as it has a Zen garden which is well known. Perhaps I will have the opportunity to reflect upon my falling beard and the vanity it represents.

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