Ian McMillan: Growing concern as the trimmer takes a nose-dive

My wife bought me the trimmer a couple of Christmases ago as a novelty stocking-filler, and I have to admit that I loved it as soon as I saw it. Well, actually not as soon as I saw it: when I first opened it I thought it was a pen and wasted several minutes trying to write with it on some Woodland Creature Notelets I’d been given by an obscure cousin.

My wife leaned over and switched on the trimmer. I jumped back briefly but then worked out what it was and thanked her with more sincerity than perhaps was strictly necessary. A nose-hair trimmer! Just what I always wanted.

So, since then, whenever I’ve been a bit tufty in the nostril area, I’ve whipped the trimmer out of the bathroom cupboard and buzzed my way to nose-baldness because, let’s face it chaps, you can wear all the trendy clothes and hair-gel you like but sprouting noseholes give you away instantly as a man who can easily remember the days before Channel 4.

And now my trimmer is silent. It is, to quote Monty Python, an ex-trimmer. At first I thought it was the battery so, testing the extent of my electrical skills to the utmost, I changed the battery but still nothing happened. I shook the trimmer, releasing a cloud of tiny hairs from the end of it, tiny hairs that had been collected from me over time, but that didn’t do any good.

I tried another battery and another one and still the trimmer sat there mute. For some reason, I tried dropping the trimmer on the kitchen floor, hoping that the action might cause some piece of delicate machinery to become unstuck and restore the sick trimmer to full fitness. It didn’t.

I told my wife. “Well, it was only a cheap one,” she said. Ah, the romance of giving.

So now, here I am, gazing into the mirror and trying to summon up the courage to pluck out the nose-hairs with a pair of tweezers. I look steadily into my eyes and I see fear. I don’t like pain. It hurts. It’s got to be done, though. One consequence of being 55 is that the hairs in and on different parts of your face grow at an alarming rate.

I try to think about something else: I imagine a stroll along the beach at Cleethorpes in the evening sun. I imagine eating fish and chips after the walk. I can almost taste the lovely bread and butter.

I close my eyes and move the tweezers slowly towards my nose. I can feel the coldness of the tweezers. My hands begin to tremble. I open my eyes and try to fool myself by darting my hand forward with the tweezers; I’m not quick enough and I dodge away and the tweezers scrape my cheek, grazing it. The long grey wiry hairs in my nostrils seem to wave with contempt.

Come on, man! Think of the women who have a full wax!

I’ll do it in a minute. Maybe I’ll buy some new batteries...