Sunday, 22 March 2020

From the shadows, cometh the light.

My throat gulps and my fingers fidget or tremble. I am breathing both rapidly and erratically. I am nervous. I know what I am about to do. I’ve been tossing it around figuratively in my mind for days -  back and forth like a piece of crustless white bread that you’ve balled up and squished all the air from:

I can't go back, that chapter is over.

                                                            If there was ever a time to come back, it's now.

They were right though, I became what I most hate.

                                                            But what is hate?

My feeling towards what I had become.

                                                            I see... But you’ve to forget that all now.

I just… I don’t know if I can do it anymore.

                                                            But what if you can?

Then maybe I can be force for good in these times?

                                                            Don’t get ahead of yourself.

But I thought you were saying...

                                                            Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t.

That’s horrible! To build me up like that…

                                                            I’m just yanking your chain! You can do it.

Finally, I take a long, poignant (the stakes are high) look at myself in the bathroom mirror. Are you still in there? Are you there, Editor? “Yes” comes back the cry, as if coming from inside an old oak cupboard at the end of a long ornate hallway, such as you might find in the Versailles Palace. “Yes”, comes the cry again, sounding the same as in the previous description, “I want to help. The people need insightful beardery, now more than ever before. Plus, nobody has been able to bring leadership and direction to the field since PMB© collapsed after the hacking scandal of December, 2017.”

Until recently, I hadn't noticed what had become of the nation's chin, tache and chops. My shame drove me underground after the hacking. What it exposed - a man driven to harrowing extremes in search of beardly perfection - is too painful to recapitulate here. The hacking held up, not a mirror to my face but, a ladder to my attic. And, up that ladder and, in that attic there was a portrait. It was me, with a grotesque moustache and palsied scrotum (I was wearing a toga in the portrait but sitting on a crouching servant boy, legs akimbo). I had to walk away, because the portrait wasn't nice to look at. Remington pulled their sponsorship soon afterwards and you know the rest.

The spiraling events of the outbreak however, gripped me by the lapels and thrust me back out into the community to hunt for vital supplies. The extent of the degradation I encountered there shook me so violently, that I could no longer insulate myself from the current plight. Pudding-bowl beards are everywhere, the Sellack moustache has returned to prominence and those trying to inject some creativity to proceedings are trying much too hard. Just days ago, I purchased a jumbo-box of sage and onion Paxo from a tradesman who had shaved the poems of Mao Zedong, 1972 through 76, into his beard. The only thing I could even read in there was "Nixon". In these darkest of days the current state of beardery is intolerable. PMB© has heard the siren's call and PMB© must answer.

People of Britain and elsewhere. You may be frightened. You may be alone. You may be bickersome with those you are not alone with, if you are not alone. You may be without household essentials and a viable pet to walk. But pioneering men’s grooming guidance you must not, you shall not lack.


PIMP MY BEARD: APOCALYPSE SOLD SEPARATELY

Loverman

Once, in conversation with tache sensation, Andrew "The Commuter" Bell, we got onto the topic of iconic Dutch centre-forwards. It wasn’t long until one particular marksman came up. “Oh, Bergkamp – he was a stone cold lover.”

This Editor is reminded of Bell’s remark whilst gazing at the mousy down of this archival Nissan beard. We've not spoken for sometime but I saw in the dailies that he's recently impregnated his glamorous wife, Alexandra, to the point of childbirth. Hat's off to them both.

Fitting then, to begin our renaissance with a naissance. And there's nuance in this naissance. Note the equal thickness of beard, brows and top. Note the buccaneering swagger. Will you be my Rear Admiral? That's right, don't be fooled by his coy, yet come-hither glance. This man's cruising for a schmoozing. And when he schmoozes you, you'll know you've been schmoozen to.



Pimp My Beard is open for business. Editor, out.