Snippy Snaps

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Pimp my Beard: Round 6

Mad Dog

In this, the last of the current series of PMB, Browning suspects he bought the extra strong Fisherman's Friends instead of the normal strength ones he usually likes. This is a beard that requires pastel fresh breath: a cool, take five inhalation before I smash your suburb dwelling face in then lecture you on crop rotation. Grown in semi arid shrub land, this is doing a crossword puzzle in your own blood, this, is Mad Dog.

Snapple Paps

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Pimp My Beard: Round 5 (with special guest appearance)

 Lip Candy

Nissan jets in from London, England to give us a taste of his casual/trim Lip Candy. 

"Lip Candy" says Nissan, "is a look I wanted to bring to Pimp My Beard ever since I first read about it the Sunday Times Supplement. We`ve seen many original, one might even say, prodigous beards in the previous rounds and while I enjoyed their chameleonic lustre, a part of me was screaming out, 'Don`t forget your roots! Don`t forget your history!' So I was delighted when the organisers offered me this spot to show young beard and beardery enthusiasts that a bold, slap in the face with a gold brick wrapped in a slice of lemon moustache still carries a strong statement in the modern era." Indeed an intransient moustache, this is a look that says on the one hand, 'This is just something I threw on before I left the house' and on the other, 'Yes, I'll have the filet mignon.' 

 Benson & Hedges

Browning takes advantage of this reflective surface to deftly sport the Benson & Hedges. A look that caters for swimming pools, large water basins such as you might find in a restraunt or soya processing plant, the sea, salt flats and the hard of hearing. The Benson & Hedges whispers slithery introspections in the ear. A look for self re-discovery, remodeling, finding the inner bank robber, taxidermist or late 18th century rural pastor.

Looking for yourself? Look no further than the Benson & Hedges.

Staring at the Dead

Mummy shook me from my trance,
Many years of minimal feeling.
Mummy shook me from my trance,
Her half open eyeless gaze, for days it sent me reeling,
Reliving and peeling back layer from layer,
Stories unfelt in self protection,
Stored inside my onion vault mind.
Mummy shook me from my trance
And my head begins to bloom.
Delicate petals: hurt, triumph, sadness, love and anger,
All class of colours burst in motion capture reaching for light and air
And blur into one stupifying sense of existence.
Perfect, speechless. The narrowest point of vision that cones infinitely and all encompassingly.
And dries the mouth, coats the body, invades every movement and seems like death.

I think back to those eyeless eyes as I begin to stabilise,
From total sensation back to my plateau of expected association.
Of things that must be because of where they are and what they are not,
Of cigarette butts and forget-me-nots.
Of waste and beauty and oh I could go on,
To list it all in some collage to look like life.
But I saw with my whole body in those Inca eyes.
Absorbed five hundred years without compromise.
Lips that seemed to mouth at me.
A little girl hit by lightning,
Expression preserved - a sacrifical offering,
Buried as close to sky as she could be brought,
In the claustrophobia of my existence I could not be taught,
To let a thing be, there being no other possibility.
The bird's nest of continuous alternatives imagined for every teasing moment starts to relax and unravel.
A boy that wandered into dark woods is coming home,
Unafraid to feel, friends with the butterflies,
Seeking less to justify,
Proud to spill ink and testify,
Or be a bulb uncompromised.
Safe in the certainty of seasonal flowering,
In the cold and dark the buds are ripening.

Potosi Miners

Crouched and crooked, struggling for breath.
Going down fast, further out of my depth.
"Into the mouth of hell", one chronicler put,
Under the mountain at twelve thousand foot.
Fumbling through the catacombs,
Dust encrusted nostrils cave in,
Claustrophobia threatening.
Ghosts in the rock,
The forgotten of the flock.
Unseen, underground,
Turned to stone through centuries without sound.

Choking, scrambling on all fours,
Palms cut on jagged debris.
Pause to heave air in,
A tenth of my strength.
Up again, under helmet and overhanging crunch,
Potosi miners, hard hattest of the bunch.
Pulling minerals from the mountain,
Dragging them up and out on defiant spines, through impossile passages.
Pushing the wagon: two by two, a ton along rusting rails,
Plunging coca into their mouths, all day with blackened nails.
The leaf their only alimentation,
The green teethed symbol of this vocation.

Dense heat, stooping torchlight and broken beams,
Distant chisels pick at the seams.
Silver, Zinc, Copper, Tin.
The periodically able, where do I fit in?
Square shouldered great grandad in the ground for coal,
Saviour hero when the pit fell in.
Great man they say, but neither I nor my father's him,
Potosi miners doing themselve in.
Living forty, fifty years,
The lungs pack up and succumb to the tears,
Of wives, mothers, sons and daughters,
The numbers stack up, the sum of their fears.

Inheritance, conscious inevitability:
The miner's son joins the fraternity,
Wears its gowns but seldom frowns,
Earns more than they do in the towns.
Answers to noone, commitment to collectivity,
A creed of positivity, a law of reciprocity.
Empowered, the cooperative sets its own hours,
Selects its holidays and shares what it pays.
The living mine's memory,
It wasn't always like this:
Forced labour, six months without daylight,
Now death has a sweeter kiss.
Families round the table, dining on meat and rice,
Potosi miners, brothers in proud sacrifice.

Pimp My Beard, The January 28th Special: Rounds 3 & 4!

Round 3:

The Amish

Beautifully accessorized  with a mast sticking perpendicular from the head and multiple wives. Quinn will certainly need plenty of courtisans to tend this chin pasture. 

The Jolly Norton

Whether enjoying a joke with a passing photographer or simply writing an email in a bohemian café, The Jolly Norton just keeps on giving. Inspired by actor Ed Norton's turncoat nazi in TonyKaye's 'American History X', this is the ultimate in flexible beardry.

Round 4:

Castaway

Planning to get ship wrecked? This is the look for you. This is, the ONLY look. Scenario: You succed in flagging down a sojourning albatross and escape your malnutrified, undersaloned island paradise. You have shaved using a particularly sharp bit of shell that you found - you wanted to make yourself look nice for when you got back. But on returning, your friends and family reject you like a baby owl that has been handled by human hands and is eaten by its mother. They simply cannot accept you're outlandish excuse for not being around to compliment their beards for the last few years without some sort of proof on your own cheeks and chin. Survivors, don't chop it, Aesop it!

The Badger Baiter

Care for some of my pine cones little badger? BLOOF! Badger mittens for little Mary. Yes that right, it's The Badger Baiter. The epitome of suave and bastard, you could talk a rodent into a catery with that moustache.

Snappy Quacks

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An Illustrated Account of Torres de Paine

Torres de Paine, someone said it meant blue,

Seemed to mean a lot of other things too.

Like winds that wouldn't let you fall,

That held me like a kite, hair dragged back and gortex blustering,

45degrees to a rocky floor,

Eyes frozen open,
Cheeks pinned high in aerodynamic grin.

Winds that sucked snot from the nose,

Pulled at my rucksack, tripped feet and shoved me about like a ring of bullies.

Meant misjudging distances.

Peaks competing with clouds, getting closer, opening up and weeping into blue lakes. Really blue.

Startled hares, dead silver forests, wind blasted prairies along the way too.

Birds everywhere, gloomy light glimpse of fox and mountain cat.

Calm and eerie in the darkening woods, curious orange fungus Mario persuaded us to eat.

Walking into the 11 o clock sunset, somehow not there yet. Surely soon.

Pitching the tent in the dark, burning the pasta,

Pissed navy twats harmless enough, I look like their mate "Tooty". Corey's headtorch leads the way. Serious sleeping bag envy  - I swear I'll wear all my clothes tomorrow night.

Waking sore and unslept, into me the cold had crept,
But soon banished by porridge and thought of glaciars.
Bounding back to my Buck´s Mills days,
Agile boy with bendy bones, flying from boulder to boulder; rock to rockpool,

All buckets, nets and excitement.

Now feet flowing a flurry of anticipation,

Granite peninsular yielding further and further,

The onslaught of the copper sulfate cavalcade.

Scrambling up the final jagged incline,

Howling and hurling an armada of icy daggers that sting the skin and pin against stoic rock.

The marble beast is letting us know who´s boss.

Crushing down 60 kilometres, it snakes its way out of a veiled lair,

An artificial horizon hidden amid snowy sky. Inhospitable.

Some sort of calm as it draws breath, ready to begin another assault,

Each way of fury hitting harder than the last.

We get the message, and we´ve had our fun - we turn.

But Geordie stands transfixed, motions a don´t move finger
- Something is approaching, hurtling in off the wind, distant, distant, then suddenly pending and
Opening its wings like a parachute, stalls, hangs - Condor.
Condor at 2 metres no more!

Enormous bird with body like a beaver, legs like fat cigars, tucked up perfectly parallel,

Everything aligned and sleek - the bird that´s too cool to flap when it flies,

Cocks its vulture neck to check us out, check we´re not dead. I meet its crystal eye.
A suspended moment, lived in, atom bomb in the mind, instant blank, all thought ended.
Bird that looks down on the rest. Deity of the Moche, Chimor, Incas and many more.
Millennial  reverence imparted in a moment. A benediction.

With whooping disbelief we beat a defiant retreat from the half forgotten glaciar´s rage.

Looking down, then up, shaking our heads as we go.

Exchanging glances, trying to say something. Still dumbfounded - a satisfying feeling when shared.
The only thing that remains is to jump in amongst the icebergs and try to ride one.
See if we can´t win the glaciar´s respect too.
Condor circling loops of approval overhead, three pioneers slip into the murky blue, descending rapidly.
The shock is instant. I had not prepared for this.

Not for genital submergion. What about the boys?  How would they cope? How would I even get dry after?

I´m fully clothed before I´m back in the water again. Beginning to get warm, but the icerberg´s waiting.
Once in a lifetime opportunity I tell myself. The boys will be ok, they´ll have to be. "Ahhh fuck it!"
I hurriedly re-undress.

Stopping to chop up chorizo.
Propped up by my pack, a pleasure to throw down anywhere - waterproof trousers, never a wet arse.
Never questioning the walk ahead. Slipping into an easy rhythm. Up at the front, views opening out.
Idling between memories that no longer hurt,

Out at the front leaving tracks in the dirt.

Hurrying ahead to take a photo:
Colours that contrast; contours converging; frames that appear between water and sky, the trunks of trees, land and cloud, one mountain and the next,
And light, always light.
Torrential rain in the afternoon, trudging through the lowlands, letting it fall, no thought of shelter
- More variety and just wonderful.
Down by the lakes, little hills full of flowers: burning red, princess shoes and all sorts.
Tunnels of gorse and tiny leaved trees. Rain pooling in narrow muddy paths. Shoes saturated.

Wind picking up again. Swinging wooden bridge, one at a time, good fun.

Arriving under gloomy pines. Things falling thunderously far away.
Getting the food on with freezing fingers. Smell of sausage frying mingles with the damp.
A jumper thoughtfully lent.

   Hand slapping the tent, Jerome´s deep Dutch voice "C´mon guys." Horrified to be woken but glad to get going. Discovering how good granola goes with porridge. Packing up the tent in the cold and wet, a miserable chore - couldn´t feel my fingers at all. Up across the boulders and into the woods. Spine chortling with delight at walking without equipment. No backache, brownie in coat pocket.

  Stopping to watch a family of birds. Parents teaching the chicks grace and how to find food on greasy moss. Making a mockery of the rapids. Skimming across gushing ranges, alternately riding and defying startled currents that would knock a man down. We stand mesmerised and ignored by these stream street performers. Art has few natural predators.   Everything blends to grey around the mountain´s shoulders. Then comes the blizzard, and the mind goes with it. Blown down the disappearing valley, resting on leaves. Everything changes. A snow mood descends. The wind stops, the procession continues, filling footprints with fresh feet. Creeping. Crunching self consciously in the soft silence. Feeling of mystery and intrigue. Everything seen so far disappeared in white. Like falling through the wardrobe. Ocuppying the same space, we take a new route back. Crack, boom! Slithering slopes. Avalanches, that shake the leaves from branches, the thunder heard before. I taunt a lofty glaciar, looking for a rise. "I don´t believe that one could send us a block of ice crashing. Hasn´t got the volume, nor the know how. An adolescent glaciar that one, a little underwhelming and, sickly, yes somewhat sickly. Hardly a few metres thick I´ll warrant. No, certainly not capable of.."CREAK! THUD! Eyes race to the scene, only ever catching the sifting aftermath. We´ll call this one a draw.

  

Flying saucer clouds and other drifting shrouds,

Cast shadows on spectacular scenes.

Shifting from glassy lake to cragged rock,

Eclipsing thought, killing the clock,

Giving birth to new senses,

Rubbing dirt in camera lenses,

And chasing off things badly thought.

Sucking on a square of chocolate,

Resting malevolent blisters,

Long grass under the arse again.

Striping down a carrot with swiss army blade,

Munch another biscuit, cream cheese and crackers,

And up again, keen to beat the rain, arrive with daylight to spare,

Maybe David and Helen will be there.

Living out of bin liners -  the only insulation against daily seasons. Black bag next to black bag in a black bag. Can´t see where you´re going in there, all textures equal. Game of hunt the thing I need. Charity case to the Doc for things I didn´t bring. Things to fix my ruined feet, that slide and rub in boots bought on the cheap. Learnt a lot about how to walk. "There´s no bad weather, only bad clothes." Some savy norwegian. Smug and warm.

Tired, quiet and aware,

Pulling bits of twigs from my hair.

Fur in cuts on fingers and dirt under the nail,

Fanning the feeling that lingers,

Walking in the rain and hail.

Walking in the wind and sun,

Thinking without words,

None to self doubt or reprimand,
None to choke or shun.
None to write eulogies,
Retell tomfooleries.

None to sculpt identity,

Nor harness a moment´s intensity.

None to desrcibe images, explain the rule of thirds,

None to fall into verbal malaise,

Wandering with flowers and birds.

Tired, quiet and aware,

Letting my feet go where they dare,

Letting anything go,

Wishing you and many more were there:

Drinking from streams on all fours,

Leaping cross puddles.

Feeling boots drying for the first time in days,

Watching giants hover in the haze,

Reflected uneasily in thick blue waters,

Lakes of uncountable age.

Sitting at their edge throwing pebbles at a floating log.

Perched on a ledge, granite towers emerging through the fog,

Lit up red by the sun´s first rays,

Exalted and peerless,

Fearless in many ways.

Remember telling someone I loved a long time ago,

About climbing to the top of a mountain to let out a wild yolpe.

- Woke from frustrated dreams to this thought,

And told it to a sleepy ear,

One which knew I´d go looking, and didn´t need to hear.

That let me go looking: for forrests, lakes, dessert and ocean,

For fjords and condors.

The colourful and abundant, the desolate and featureless,

And for my mountains, at the top of which I find I´m speechless.