Your attitude to adventure in the name of progress will, in all likelihood, colour your view of what I am about to share. I am often up for a dare, even if I have to dare myself to do something, as was the case today.
I am not a vain man but everyone has limits; and my particular line in the sand is drawn around the issue of ear hair. As I mature my ears sprout white hair from within and without, left to its own devices it is, in my view, a particularly unattractive feature. Shaving ones ears is a hazardous business and provides imperfect - and occasionally barbarous - results.
I remembered hearing an account of a visit to a Turkish barbers' shop that involved the singeing of ear hair using Surgical Spirit to moisten the ear before flambé-ing the hairs away. This seemed a perfectly logical approach when coupled with memories of a pub trick whereby the prankster would douse his (it was always a man) finger with lighter fluid and set it alight; the finger emerged uncharred the rationale being that only the fuel burned away.
With hindsight I think that both memories were of events where alcohol was a significant contributor to the occasion; that is the only way I can think of explaining the abject failure of something that was clearly so promising in theory.
Stood before the bathroom mirror I doused my ear with a generous helping of surgical spirit, struck a match and applied it gingerly to my right earlobe. There followed the anticipated flash; however, what I did not anticipate was that Sugical Spirit would be rather more slow burning than one might imagine and so the hair and my ear required a thorough batting with my hand to extinguish the merry blaze. It is a good job I was alone in the house, it took the opening of all of the upstairs windows to rid the house of the acrid smell of burning hair.
So now I have, on one ear, a bushy untreated growth of white ear hair and on the other singed remains that resemble a heather moorland after a peat fire. I shall shave my left ear tonight; my right ear is rather too tender to shave at present and I could not stand to lose any more skin from its surface.
Chastened but not discouraged I offer you, the cyber world, the gauntlet of aural depilation; what is your favourite technique? Or should I just get over it and consider myself gorgeous as seems to be the gospel according to Gok Wan on Channel 4's How to Look Good Naked.
I have chosen another one of Lisa's excellent pictures (click on her name to see more) to illustrate this post: the naked iron statue is one of a number of Antony Gormley's at Crosby beach in Lancashire. I think the picture captures the steely resolve with which I approached my depilatory disaster.
