Though I knew from the start his English wasn’t that great, I also didn’t think for a moment anything could go wrong. I’ve been getting the same #1 or #2 clipper cut haircut for the last twenty years. The only thing that’s changed in the last few years is that I’ll occasionally get a beard trim also.

In the same way that growing a beard was an “accident” four years ago when I left my shaving cream and razors at home in Sydney, losing my beard was equally an accident.

Confident that my instructions were clear enough, I closed my eyes, and settled back in the chair, as the barber did his work. “Gosh, he’s taking a long time”, I thought to myself after a while. It was then that I opened my eyes and saw that I no longer had an albeit patchy beard, but a moustache. Knowing I couldn’t possibly live with a moustache, I told him to keep going and get rid of that as well.

As quite a few of the people I work with are recent arrivals, there were lots of stunned faces to the sight of me with a cleanly shaved face today. “Oh my, you have such a baby face” was one of the comments I remember most. The thing I noticed was that it was only the women in the office who commented. The men were uniformly of the comment, “I hadn’t noticed until such and such commented”.

This clean look will only be a short-term one, I think, as I really hate shaving. I’ll put the loss (of a beard) down to experience, I guess.

But there was a “win” on the weekend, also. I was meeting some mates for dinner last night and had called in to the bottleshop at the local supermarket to pick up some wine. Confident that I had timed it correctly (I checked Tripview), I thought I could go to the bottle-o, pick up the wine, and then catch a bus to Oxford Street. However, as I walked out of the supermarket, I discovered the bus had arrived a couple of minutes early. Though the bus was stationary, it had already joined the traffic flow, and so when I looked at the driver, begging him to open the door and let me on, he rightly refused my request.

“Buggar it”, I thought. “I’ll run to the next stop” (300-400 metres away) and hope that I can get on there. I’m obviously fitter than I used to be, as I made the stop with plenty of time to spare. Even enough time to pull out my phone and take a shot of the forthcoming bus. On making it, I received a hearty “congratulations” from some passengers who had seen what happened.

It’s the little things.