Kay Town
Andrew Kay gets a handle on his handlebar
The observant amongst you will have noticed that my moustache is back. One or two people have commented, some on the street. I think that might have been barracking, whatever, the ‘tache is back.
Some of you have asked if I did it for charity in ‘Tache Back month but I am ashamed to say that I did not, I missed the boat on that one. I grew it back at the end of the summer because it’s fun, funny even. Of course these days it’s much different, curly as ever yes, but now it is almost all white.
“The application of the moustache wax is an art in itself”
This in itself raises a few problems. You see the moustache wax that I use comes in a variety of colours. Yes moustache wax, nothing else works; I know, I have tried. In desperation once using soap, only to go out in the rain and ended up with a foamy upper lip. The colours of the wax are black, brown and neutral. I have always favoured neutral but last year there was a world shortage of neutral moustache wax. Would you believe it?
In a moment of extreme need I decided to buy a tube of brown. In all honesty I thought it would be OK. How wrong could I have been. The brown promised was a light chestnut. The brown delivered was dark oak, bordering on black. So close to black in fact that it begged the question, how black is the black tube? It was all I had so I pressed on.
The application of the moustache wax is an art in itself. The right hand side needs to be applied using the right index finger and thumb, drawing the moustache laterally out to create the appropriate curl. Inversely the left hand side must be curled using the left hand forefinger and thumb. Any attempt to use one hand results in one side of the moustache curling down and the other up. Not a good look. If you overstretch the wax the moustache will set into a hard horizontal line. It can look rather good but over the day the natural tendency to curl will overcome the wax’s tensile strength.
That’s the science bit done. Now the problem with the brown wax was two-fold. Firstly the colour was so dark that the moustache looked fake, like a joke moustache. This encouraged people to tug at it in jest. Not a comfortable experience I can assure you.
Secondly the wax, when wet, runs. The result being, that in the rain my mouth looked like one of Dusty Springfield’s eyes after singing a particularly heartbreaking torch song. Not good.
It would of course be much easier to shave the blooming thing off again, but I am rather attached to it, in every sense. And over the years I have become immune to the jibes, the Salvador Dali jokes and general merriment that it can provoke. So, given that neutral wax is now available again, I will, for the time being, be keeping it.
