Contrary to my gloomy predictions, I didn’t sever an ear, so mentions of van Gogh proved to be premature. However, I did spend several minutes trying to shave my head without producing much result. A moment’s thought revealed the cause for the lack of progress – I’d neglected to remove the clear plastic safety guard. Well, it’s a very small, clear plastic guard, and I was tired.
I’ve had a variety of problems with razors, apart from stupidity. The main one is theft. Even the most respectable people seem prone to criminality when faced by a bag of razors.
I the early days of our marriage I used to employ a razor once every couple of months to tidy up the edges of my beard. I would return to it periodically and always find it clogged with dark hairs and congealed shaving foam. This was strange, as I always clean my razor after use and have never had dark hair.
Julia, who I will characterise as a dark-haired woman with beautifully smooth legs for the purposes of this story, always denied any knowledge of how this happened.
For the last twenty years I haven’t bothered with tidying the beard, but I have shaved my head from time to time. I would have shaved it more but I never seem to have a razor when I need one.
The normal scenario for that was that I would decide to shave my head and find no trace of my razors, despite buying a bag of razors and using only one or two.
Further enquiries, including interrogating Julia and the boys resulted in no useful information. Either my two smooth-cheeked sons and my smooth-legged wife were part of a web of deceit regarding the theft of my razors or, more likely, a local cat burglar was targeting my razors.
Obviously this seems unlikely but, as Sherlock Holmes pointed out “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
As a note for future generations, the car thermometer was reading 38.5 degrees C tonight on the way home. This is 101.3 degrees F. Julia recorded the same temperature in the gardens. This is hot for the UK. I wonder if someone, reading this in twenty years, will laugh ironically at the thought of this being hot.
At least, with no hair and a drastically trimmed beard, I felt more comfortable than I have done on previous days.