Barefaced

"To be(ard) or not to beard that is the question…"

It is a question which has been a little on my mind since November last, especially as the East wind has been more than usually unkind this winter. For a decade past that would not be an issue as my face smiled under its protective brush. Now that Bob Geldof has stirred the conscience of us all what might be done?
» To begin at the beginning. I grew a beard because I always knew I would. Perhaps it was the influence and impression of the Che Guevarra posters which conveniently covered 'accidents' to walls and doors in University (Disney) Land in Galway.
The growth, however, took place in the anonymity of the London streets. It was not that I was going through what my friend T. Hill used to call a 'down n' out phrase'. It was the summer of '74 and while I was respectably employed from September to June in St. Mary's College, that summer I had returned to London to the 'Green' Murphy. The Murphy brothers were known as, 'the green' and 'the grey' as they used different coloured lorries to distinguish themselves. This was a simple expedient in things otherwise alike. Murphy's headquarters was in Kentish town close to the better known Camden Town where Fagin-like, Sullivan John and his acolytes lived.
I was part of what was dramatically called 'a search and find' gang. Search for, find and repair gas leaks in a designated area of East London. The Gas Board or Telephone Company usually pinpointed the location of the leaks as this apparently played havoc with their equipment and by its nature was dangerous. Our gang descended on the location in blitzkrieg fashion, in our distinctive green van, with the attached compressor engine hopping in our train. We took particular delight in arriving at a busy junction, such as East Ham, and urgently erecting, 'no smoking', 'diversion', 'one lane only' signs. We then activated the jack-hammers sufficiently to insert and leave them erect in the ground. By then we discovered it was lunch -time and proceeded to the adjacent 'Rose and Crown' for the necessary pints of Red Barrel and the cheese rolls of the time." We spent a generous hour there, playing Shanghai, while a distracted London Bus Inspector tried valiantly to bring some order to the bus schedules now in chaos, as we tried just as hard to arrive at a double one from a single three. My adventures in London are another story and I have digressed towards them as I always seem to do!

The beard:

The beard progressed nicely through the fashionable stubble toward the foundations of a Sikh attribute." Its development necessitated the inconvenience of missing just one Saturday night at The Gresham (another story).
My bearded return to Fuerty (my native shore) caused little reaction as they were rarely quite sure where I was in those care-free summers, as the decade of the sixties borrowed from the seventies, to continue the party. The only incident I remember was in my second home, Boyle. Here I was enthusiastically welcomed 'home', in Grehan's bar, by John Mahon as he stood in exaggerated disbelief at the fact that I had not yet gone into the kitchen to see my 'mother Bridie'. John believed me to be Tony alright but a different one, Tony Grehan, to whom I was said to bear a resemblance."
Through the seventies, while staying in Paddy Ryan's flat, in Main Street, the beard mirrored periods of untidiness in a life being smothered by G.A.A. jerseys. Like creeping ivy making inroads through the windows of an old house it tended to spread out over my face defeating the timid efforts of the battery razor. The face would appear in occasional photographs as no more than a black blur. In the odd times of resolution, such as Easter, it would be trimmed to within a millimetre of its existence.
To abandon the beard entirely was a latent impulse to be triggered by a respectable excuse. That excuse presented itself in October '84 when Boyle Round Table was having a novelty auction as part of the Ethiopian Famine Appeal. I mutedly offered up the beard. The notion spread when mentioned in class and an active committee of students showed that anything can be commercialised and over one hundred and thirty pounds was the value placed on it in a short campaign.
D-Day arrived. At an appropriate juncture in the Auction the scene was set, with as much theatre as possible, and then barber Gerry Morris did the honours with obvious satisfaction. Lochlainn, my four year old son, watched curiously, having earlier wondered what good my beard would do for the starving children in Africa. In ten minutes or so I had all variations of facial embellishment from beard through stubble and moustache to zero.

Reaction:

Subsequent reaction was varied and curiously interesting. Mrs. Nellie O'Callaghan told me a long hidden truth; " that ould beard did nothing for you anyway". Another lady exclaimed that I looked well, with undertones of relief that another John Merrick had not been uncovered. My wife was a little uncomfortable with the 'new' man while my two year old was re-assured by voice. In Fuerty a local welcomed me home from England mistaking me conveniently for my brother who always stood him a drink.
I went through the full gambit of peoples' observational powers. Some recognised something to be different but could not quite pin-point it. Others, used as an opportunity to do what they had wanted to do for some time and ignored me. A concise salute like 'nice to see you' held the touch of ambiguity.
For myself I suddenly found out I was going to have to shave again and catch up on the ten year advance in that technology, overnight. What of the future now that the emotional billboard stands defaced and this being a year ('85) of elections and new parties, not a time to create confusion and attempt re-branding perhaps. As the old Scottish King exclaimed, "Is this a razor I see before me?"