My hand touches my face, and I feel the soft, sharp hair there. Now it’s trying vainly to cover the expanding spare chin. I shouldn’t have cut it; long, it had been doing a better job.

When I decided that I wanted to have an expansive beard “just like Gandalf”, it never occurred that there would be a length where it stopped growing. It always settled a hand-span from my chin; reasonable, but not what I childishly desired.

I’ve always had long hair. It started with my mother who forewent barbers in favour of a quality bowl-cut, complete with uneven fringe. I had bright blond hair that both my young son and daughter sport now. It looks better on them, but it shone on me, too.

Childhood photographs of me are rare, but I know about the hair from one. I’d been washing up for my grandparents, a child equally eager to please his relatives as he was happy to splash about with the warm suds. I doubt my work on the dishes was particularly stellar, but I knew that it protected my hands from the cold that pervaded 80s homes. A time before central heating, the washing-up water was a welcome respite.

My Grandad hung the framed snapshot on the wall.

Like many proud grandparents, mine had a line of photographs as you went up the stairs; the boys on one wall, the girls opposite. And, on a return visit, he took particular glee in pointing his latest pictures out to my mother.

“Look!” he said, “What do you think?”

“Who’s that girl?” she asked, peering carefully at the child standing on a stool at the sink.

Then, he laughed, a deep raucous chuckle that was destined to taper off to ill-health and sadness. “That,” he enthused, “is your son!”

For my Grandad never really approved of my golden locks. He was more a short back and sides man.

It was a small prank, putting my picture with my girl cousins. A joke to prove a point.

But I didn’t listen; even today, my hair falls onto my shoulders. It has lost the sunshine, and the top is bald, but it remains in defiance of my Grandad’s sensibilities.

I should let the beard grow long again, though I’ll never be the Grey Pilgrim. This chin is better off hidden.