It was when the old lady passing the bottle bank lobbed me two quid and told me to get myself a nice cup of tea that I realised my lockdown face fungus had to go. I hadn’t shaved for months and as I battled with the empties that spewed noisily from my split carrier bag, I realised I was far from kempt.
I wanted to explain to her that it wasn’t empty bottles of cider I was getting shot of but top class cru Beaujolais that I’d tasted on behalf of no less a journal than The Spectator, but a crowd was already beginning to gather and rather than humiliate myself further, I touched my forelock, muttered a humble ‘Thank you, lady’, and slunk home.
I don’t know about you, but I let myself go during lockdown and, despite jibes from my boys about Stig of the Dump, I hadn’t quite appreciated how unsavoury my wild, grey crumb-catcher and dishevelled balding pate had become and how much extra timber I was carrying around my middle.
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