A year ago, I started a beard. It was a holiday beard, the kind of beard that you grow because you’re off work for a fortnight. But at the end of the fortnight we all agreed that, with a small amount of management, it looked fairly smart, and Karen also liked the way it felt against her thighs so I decided to keep it.

This went well for a few months, until in January I developed an awful plucking habit. I have no idea how it started, but before long I was addicted to the sensation of the hair sliding out of its socket. I was chain-plucking, I couldn’t control my hands.

Before long, the areas that were receiving the brunt of my attentions were becoming visibly less densely forested. “I can stop”, I said, but could I? Could I, boat. Sparseness escalated, and soon we were looking at swathes of total facial desertification.

Once things have gone this far, there’s only one way to be sure; nuke it from orbit. I returned to the community of the beardless.

Initially, my stubble continued to grow back unevenly – those afflicted patches were salted, metaphorically speaking, and remained baby-smooth for a few days. However, soon they recovered, and I embarked upon the beard project from first principles.

Again, I managed a few months of beardfulness. In May my plucking tendencies returned, and once again it was necessary to commit beardicide. But my habit is now worse than ever, and I have so far been unable to even restart the beard. If I shave every single day, then I can keep the facial hair short enough to have nothing to hold onto. But if I miss one day, then by the second day I am scrabbling around for grabbable follicles like a crystal maze contestant in the dome, teasing out anything that I can grip.

So that’s what I’ve been up to, how are you?