Asymetric

Monday morning. I’m an hour late for work because it turns out I’ve somehow got to the age of 52 without apprehending the fundamentals of how rechargeable domestic electrical devices work, and so have managed to drain the battery in my beard shaving/trimming machine by leaving it connected to the mains electric for the entire weekend in what I had presumed to be a virtuoso display of uber-work-preparedness, but turns out to have been a schoolboy error (a schoolboy error in the subject of elementary Physics, at that). I say ‘drain the battery’, that would have actually been fine, an annoying but manageable and ultimately inconsequential workaday inconvenience. Instead there was actually twelve seconds of misleadingly vigorous life left in the ergonomically attractive contraption, just enough for it to unerringly apply a 2mm length shave to exactly one half of my face (the left half, if you were looking at it in a mirror, so I suppose actually the right half), before expiring with a whirring death-rattle, leaving everything points East of the nose liberally covered with two weeks’ worth of shaggy salt-and-pepper growth worthy of Captain Birdseye in his pomp.

It’s an asymetric look with, I reflect as it reflects back to me, a certain daring post-modernist anti-bourgeois motif, and I fancy I wouldn’t look out of place in a Warhol-curated New York Attic-staged ‘Happening’, or perhaps as the subject of one of Picasso’s more playful etchings. As the Monday morning grooming style of choice adorning the visage of a lowly clerk within the offices of a present-day Northern English Housing Association, well- let’s just say I would have been the talk of the 5th floor watercooler area. And not in a good way, unless the prospect of your work colleagues gathered huddled together in the mid-morning corridors mouthing to each other words to the effect of ‘What the hell has that odd Geordie bloke off Social Investment done to his face?’ features on your quarterly personal objective grid.

It doesn’t on mine, for some reason, so it is with a heavy heart that I crouch down in front of the bedroom mirror (the bathroom doesn’t have a mirror, just to complicate matters) to dedicate the 845 to 915AM slot that I normally spend battling with the M60 instead hacking away at the Eastern reaches of my face with a pair of nail scissors, occasionally interspersed with the tactically-placed three-second bursts of life I can still cajole out of the moribund beard machine in return for short helpings of mains voltage. Much clipping, whirring and spluttering later I adjudge myself to look- well not exactly presentable, but at least not quite so obviously like the result of late-night hotel-room stag-do high-jinks at the practical joking expense of a slumbering groom- or indeed like that episode of MASH where the white-haired one falls asleep drunk and wakes up with only half his moustache on. So I decide I had better get to work, given that it is nearly 10 oclock and I’ve got my regular one-to-one with my manager at 1030. I make it just in time, and think I catch her casting a quizzical glance at my features as we sit down. She says nothing though, and neither does anyone else during the rest of the working day- at least not to my face (either half of it).

I do give the water cooler a wide berth until hometime, mind you. One of my objectives in the appraisal document might say something about ‘Raising my profile within the department’, but I don’t think that it continues ‘… by adopting without explanation an outlandish physical appearance in such a way as to send your colleagues dashing for the fire exits in a mixture of alarm and mirth’. A pity really, it would have been nice to get one of them ticked off. Bottomed out. Notch up a quick win. Harvest the Low Hanging Fruit. Stop me, someone, please.

Comments

[looby]

On one of my first reccies to Bristol I was accommodated by a man who shaved his head asymmetrically. It did strike me as quite avantgarde even by modern standards. I found myself muttering in a Daily Mail sotto voce "you'll grow out of that one day. Literally."

[jonathan]

That does sound like an artistic accomplishment indeed Looby, but all in all frankly unnecessary and if anything I admire your restraint in not retiring immediately to your private quarters within the Western seaport and typing a brisk missive to the Mail's correspondence pages foretelling the end of civilisation. Unless of course that is exactly what you did. In which case I applaud you wholeheartedely, Sir.

And I'm glad you noticed (and commented on) this post. Sometimes if there are two so closely together after a longish absence I worry the first will just disappear into the ether!

[daisyfae]

Prior to retirement, and back in the years where i was 'engineer barbie' (wearing heels/mini-skirts on the regular), i found a fine pair of 3" heels that i loved - comfortable and attractive! so i bought the same shoe in several colors.

one particularly scattered morning, i found myself at the office wearing one blue, and one black, shoe. i stayed in my office, feet under my desk, for as much of the day as possible... but they noticed. in hindsight, it makes a great story, but at the time i was mortified!