Pimp My Beard: The Pandemic Years

I see patio furniture, everywhere.

Yes, that's right beardophiles, there's a nu kidd on the blok (note: I'm not a fan of such phonetic spelling alternatives but our lawyer, Ken Undercleft - actually a pretty good guy, alerted me to the fact that former new kid on the block™, Gavin Humongous Finney, has in fact bought the rights to the phrase when applied in a beardery context). Without, therefore, further ado, PMB© brings you:

Soft Rock

First, a confession. I know this guy. I first met Avishek Banerjee, in the hot, hot summer of 2003. A rare reprieve of rain had just passed and a fetid perfume of dogs' piss, vegans' fart and bins' juice hovered above the sun baked pavements of Bristol's latin quarter. It's a little known fact about this Editor, but my hair will not tolerate anything between mid to aggressive humidity - so I had to get in somewhere pronto. Then, just as panic began its demented fumblings at the letter box to my brain: faint sonic tinklings reaching out to me. From afar? From where? I knew I had to follow: I had sub 60 seconds before the rising vapors would overwhelm the L'Oréal Tight Hold, generously moussed into my locks mere hours earlier, and my coiffure would go full Swayze. I closed my eyes and sunk to my knees to bring all my focus to bear on pinpointing the source of the gently calling sounds (I had recently watched a Kevin Costner film, I think Waterworld, in which he had great success with this technique). Someone told me to get out of the fucking way but I didn't hear because I was so focused and sensual. Suddenly, as if it were not me that were doing it, I got to my feet and sprinted to the end of the street. Vegans were looking at me, but I didn't care. I rounded the corner and plunged down a flight of steps that carried me to the subterranean fountain of sound: a low ceiling-ed blues bar with white-washed walls and a thick fug of cigar smoke. And there was Avishek, on stage with his band, The Psychedelic Omnivore Caravan, stroking notes from his guitar like whimpers of pleasure from an over-aroused cat.

After the gig, I invited Avi for a drink (stout) and explained how his artful guitar plucking had guided me away from a clear and precipitant danger to my thatchy barnet. He listened attentively with a far away look in his eye and I knew he was composing a song about my travails using his mind. We then struck up an easy going exchange around cloud formations and our shared dislike for the musical note, B. Cutting edge beardery was just a twinkle in my eye back then, but ever since the birth of PMB©; its burgeoning growth; the time I let myself down and was exposed by vigilante facial defence hackers: then my triumphant leap back into the scene like Free Willy smashing through the surface of the water (representing self doubt) and up into the Atlantic air (the internet), but then remaining there at the apex of his jump (top of the beardery charts) forever, I have been making encouraging noises to Avi about making a submission.

In our last edition, I took the liberty of springing a cameo on the man. He sent me a text of a monocled face emoji followed by prosthetic leg and turbaned man. I guessed he'd enjoyed the cameo appearance, but nagging doubts nagged me that I had not first sought his permission to use one of our privately shared images. You can imagine my sticky palmed anticipation therefore, when I received an email titled, "New Album and a picture you might like". Now going by the name of his solo outfit, The A.V.I. who Shegged me, his new album, 'Es P an âge?', certainly jostled my clogs. As for the picture attached to the email, well, not only did it blow my socks, but it flipped my lid, hit me for six and then tore me a new one. Gaping. That picture, as you have guessed, was of his cosmically toussled new look: Soft Rock.