Deeming potentially life threatening rises in cholesterol, blood pressure and body fat as insufficient penance for a misspent younger years, god also feel the need to inflict trial by nasal hair upon the middle-aged male.
These irritatingly difficult to cull nostril strands, requiring frequent grooming, a carbuncle on once bald nasal passages. High maintenance follicles whose unsightly nature automatically attract the eye of anyone within it’s close proximity.
I reckon throughout my life I spent hundreds of hours transfixed by these repugnant hairs on older family and friends. Like ‘rubber-necking’ drivers travelling on the opposite side of the road to a major highway crash, I simply cannot bring myself to avert my stare if I’m conversing with an individual who possesses a mane of nasal hair.
If Netflix created a show called Hairy Nostrils, a broadcast showing hours of close ups of old man nasal strands, I’d most likely be an addict. GJ Strachan thinking nothing of paying the £5.99 monthly subscription to binge watch nose hair and bogeys in HD.
Some, probably most, would find witnessing such broadcasts abhorrent and of course it would be. However, if truth be told, I need help with this habitual gawping at conk carpet. I’m not proud of my addiction, a realisation that has even led me to consider booking myself into the Betty Ford Clinic for treatment.
If you’re reading this and you’ve a scheduled rendezvous with yours truly, you can assist in my rehabilitation by trimming your nasal hair prior to the meet up. Simple actions like that would greatly support me in my fight with these idiosyncratic cravings. It’s worth noting, a consequence of failing to do so meaning I’d be too transfixed by your nose follicles to concentrate on your banter.
I get why individuals get more bodily hirsute as they get older. Or at least GJ Strachan thinks he does. That being a pelt is the residual evolutionary factor from when thicker hair provided warmth to the male hunter gatherers of the ‘cave man’ era. This hair providing comfort when leaving the cave to brave the elements while seeking food for their brood.
That being said, I’m baffled as to at what point in homo sapien evolution was it decided nasal hair was required? At some point in are development were the insides of our nostrils particularly sensitive to cold temperatures?…… It seems to me the conk carpet is similar to the human appendix, or Alexander Armstrong cd, as something we’ve acquired but have no reason why.
Of course, there’ll be an answer why males of the species evolved with the capability to look like we’re sporting curtains of hair from our nostrils in middle-age. I’m too lazy to google the reason though. Plus, if there is a reason I’d have to delete the last three paragraphs of this essay. As I’m taking my daughter for lunch shortly, deleting swathes of text is something I’ve no time for today.
My late dad had periods where he exhibited curtains of hair from his nostrils, of which I allude to above. In his dotage, he also displayed strands outside of the nasal passages about 5 mm from the base of his snout. Hairs, which I dubbed his Irish moustache. I spent many a long hour sharing a bottle of red, while staring at these unusually sited strands.
What I’d give to see them flapping majestically in an early autumn breeze again as we meandered down to the East Ardsley Connie club for a liquid lunch……. Ah, there I go again, dreaming the impossible dream.
