Jonny McCambridge: Tears, instead of cheers, as the beard is sheared

And so, I am cackling quietly as I shave off my beard. My plan is that without warning or explanation I will enter the living room with freshly shorn features and then revel in the shocked but delighted reaction of my wife and son. They will surely applaud the richness of my comedic gesture.

To be clear, I did not shave off my beard merely for a practical joke. It had been in my mind for some time to do it.

My face has been furred for several years. My son has no memory of me without a beard. There has been a growing curiosity about just what is going on behind all that facial hair.

It’s roughly the same principle as that behind deep sea exploration, a desire to expand knowledge, to know what secrets lie underneath.

Thus the decision to divorce myself from the bristles came first, the decision to maximise it for comic effect is secondary.

I walk gingerly into the living room where my wife is helping my son with his homework. I stroll back and forth and then pretend that I am doing something important with the TV. They don’t notice me.

I clear my throat and enquire after what they are doing. My wife replies without looking up. I fuss about with some of the cushions on the sofa and then sit beside them. Still they don’t notice anything.

I make exaggerated gestures of running my hand along my perfectly smooth chin.

I am now wondering if my prank is actually turning into more of a social experiment. How long can I exist in the company of my family without them noticing my presence?

I emit a few fake coughs and slide closer to my son. I stick my head between him and his homework. He pushes me away.

‘Move out of the way daddy!’

My boy looks at me crossly. I am reduced to pointing at my chin and smiling inanely.

Then he realises.

He screams and runs out of the room.

My wife’s reaction is just a moment behind. She gasps and then bursts into tears.

All in all, the execution did not go quite the way I had planned it when I was shaving in front of the bathroom mirror. As I said, I’m not a natural prankster.

Although it does occur that I should be sympathetic about the shocked reaction to such a drastic change in my appearance. While our faces are continually transforming, it happens so gradually that the alteration is not noticed until you look back at a photo from an earlier time.

My beard took weeks to grow, was matured over years and was sheared in minutes.

Unless I decide to undergo extreme facial plastic surgery (never say never), then there is no other single moment which presents such a radical and immediate alteration as the first view after slicing off my beard.

Now I am constantly surprised when I look in the mirror, as if it is another staring back at me.

I am particularly disturbed by the shape of my chin. In my pre-bearded youth I had no issues with my chin, in fact I’m not sure I ever thought much about it at all. Now, when I look at it anew after all these years, it seems shrunken and weak.

I can’t shake the impression that an important section of my face has been amputated (which is essentially what has happened).

However, any concerns I have over my original chin are overshadowed (literally) by my dissatisfaction with a new second chin which is revealed in its full lack of glory for the first time, as if someone has inflated the area at the bottom of my jaw with a bicycle pump.

I post a photo of my updated appearance on social media. The public is divided, although I am consistent in my ability to always think the worst.

There is a smattering of respondents who say they admired the beard (oh no, they don’t like my new face!), and a slightly larger number who say that they think I look younger and better now (oh no, they hated my old face but didn’t let on!).

Perhaps I should expand on this research, maybe put before and after photos on this page and encourage readers to send in their views.

Or I could embrace the digital journalism which has hitherto been a mystery to me and run an online poll on whether I am preferred hirsute or pared.

I go to put my son to bed. When he sees me coming he hides under the covers. Eventually I persuade him to give me a cuddle although he does it only after we agree to the pre-condition that he won’t have to touch my face.

As I tuck him in I ask: ‘Why don’t you like me without the beard buddy? You know it is still the same daddy underneath?’

He thinks about if for a moment.

‘It looks horrifying. It’s just that you don’t look like you anymore daddy?’

I stay with him as he drifts off to sleep. There is an old photo on the far wall of the two of us together on a happy day. I look at the image of my beard, the wiry copper and white bristles sprouting at angry angles like the old brush I use to clean the hearth. The poorly groomed facial hair is thick and full at the bottom of my chin but fades away at the sides of my face and never quite succeeds in making contact with my sideburns, the way it is supposed to.

It’s not quite classical, but it is particular to me.

While never a devoted pogonophile, the truth is that I had got used to my facial hair. My reasons for growing it arose from weariness at the constant chore of shaving, rather than any sense of style or vanity. Now, as I look at the old photo, I begin to think it suited me rather well.

I rub my fingers across the skin, the roughness of the stubble is returning already, breaking through like wild grass in wasteland. My son is snoring gently beside me. I decide that I miss my beard.

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