Shaving a beard

Growing a beard is slow, gradual process, and the few times that I have grown one I hardly notice myself change. Rather than my appearance, it's the change in texture that I feel: the transition from freshly-shaved smooth skin to stubble, to abrasive shoots, to bristle and to the rough texture of short hair. I've never grown it beyond a centimetre of two, so I don't know what a long beard would feel like upon my face.

On shaving the beard, the change is sudden and stark. My cheeks and chin feel cold and naked, and so smooth, and the different face in the mirror is startling. Friends notice the change in both directions, if they don't see me for a week or so, and reactions to my bearded face vary from very positive (usually from women), to mockery from men.

Men have such a variety of types of head hair. The ordinary hair on the skull (assuming that one has some, and as I'm going bald, I haven't much) is different from beard, and eyelashes and eyebrows are different again. Then there's the changing nature of all types; the gradual slide into grey or white from the original colours of both skull hair and beard, the coarsening on eyebrows - which my daughter plucks for me - and the appearance of longer thicker hairs in the ears and nostrils. And there's the almost invisible down of velar hair, the wisps of nothing upon the smooth skull where head hair used to grow before maturity or age took their revenge.

I guess that in this aspect, women's faces are less interesting than men's when examined intimately in close-up, although the shapes and curves and lines are also there to be wondered at. Most women that I have known seem to depilate themselves obsessively, but the few women's faces that I have seen and pored over with a fine down or trace of moustache, have not been less attractive for that. In my opinion, anyway.