... it's a bizarre subject for a thread, i admit, but there's a certain pleasure to be got out of a very good close shave! to be sure, it's one that FD hasn't experienced for many decades, and normally i hate shaving - it's time consuming, messy, and I usually cut myself to ribbons, and end up looking like the scrag end off a butcher's block. But Mrs Taw has just got me a new razor, a Gillette Sensor 3 and some wicked new shave foam (only 99p from Al-Teskawh) and i've just given myself one of the best and closest shaves for years. Added to that the Christian LaCroix aftershave she got me off eBay for a fiver (ok it's prob knocked off in Hong Kong or Guang-Zhou province, who cares,?it's got LaCroix on the bottle!) and it's been a refeshing and invigorating experience!

The very best shave i ever had was by a grotty little arab barber in the back streets of the old medina in Sousse, Tunisia. He shoved me in a chair, lathered me up with a real soapstone, one of which i hadn't seen since I was a kid, and shaved me to the bone with a boiling hot cuthroat razor. I thought he was going to slice and dice me but when he'd finished i didn't have a scratch on me, he didn't draw a drop of blood, and it was the smoothest i'd been since I started growing fuzz. it felt great actually and he only charged me 6 dinar, and gave me fresh mint tea and let me puff away on his tabac hookah too. I went there every couple of days after that for 2 weeks and spent the rest of the afternoon in the hammam - what a civilised way to spend the day.

UK barbers don't do shaves anymore, and haven't for years, mostly, which is a shame. There's an old barber in Stoke who still does sgaves but he's about 80 and i wouldn't trust his hand these days. Long gone are the days when you could nip to the barbers at dinnertime (lunch i mean, showing my northerness again there) and have a short back'n'sides and a good shave. Another tradition sadly gone Now it's all styling salons where young people go to look like whatever their favourite footballer or this week's celebrity is sporting. pah! Under my towel I've had the same back n sides style with parting for years, does me just fine. I could bever have a haircut like these young people have, or these strange little beards they sport. The Boy wants some sort of tracks in his hair with streaks? I said there was about as much chance of that happening as there was me being the next Pope.