For want of anything better to do, I've grown a beard. I've been meaning to so this for a while, as some of you will remember: not because I ever thought it would look any good (and I'm haven't been disappointed, it doesn't) but since I won't get the chance again. Most workplaces, after all, would drive me out with flaming torches if I turned up in this state. Anyway, I realised last week I hadn't shaved for a few days and I wondered how I would look if I left it for a fortnight. The answer, as you can see above, is "like some sort of sex case". I'm getting the razor out as soon as I'm finished writing this.

The last chance I had to experiment with facial hair was at University, where most people (or those ones with highers and A-levels, at any rate) feel relatively at ease making fashion mistakes. Unfortunately for me, when I started writing for the student rag I found the bloke employed to pick up the paper from the printers and distribute it around campus shared my name. To distinguish us, he became "Jon Kelly with the beard" and I was "Jon Kelly without the beard". Had I grown facial fungus of my own, no-one would have been able to tell us apart and the whole enterprise would have collapsed. So I carried on using my blunted Wilkinson Sword. Well, every two or three days or so, as often I would be far too busy watching Neighbours and trying to get into crap post-rock bands to bother with grooming. 

I won't be sorry to see the back of the hair on my face, but I am relieved to see it return in bulk to the top of my head. After the operation my locks were shorn to the bone and there's always the fear, once you hit your mid-twenties, that they won't return again, or that if they do, they'll come back thinner and in a receding pattern. Thankfully, mine remain reassuringly thick - a state of affairs helped, I think, by the fact that as they grew no scissors thinned or layered or feathercut them, techniques all provided as standard now even by the grubbiest £3.50-a-trim men's barbers shops. Such are the emasculations of the age, but that's another matter.

Anyway, time for a shave. I've had enough of looking like Peter Sutcliffe.