Cigar stories: A close shave

I had the beard growing for the best part of 8 weeks and a fine beard it was too. Some people are unable to grow beards. Not me though, my beard was a full beard, with flecks of grey, a bit itchy now and then, but it grew on me. Ba-dum-tish!

I'd already decided to get rid of it before I was due back at work. So what better place to do it than Sam's Barber shop where I was spoiled rotten with a hot towel treatment, followed by a shave with a cut-throat razor, then an Indian head and upper body massage to finish.

Sam began with a quick tidy up of my hair (the bit left on my head) and then shaved off the beard with a clippers in a matter of seconds. A lemmy was offered but politely refused. It was strange to see the beard, something that had take some time to grow, taken off my face so quickly. There one minute, gone the next. Oh well. It was also strange to see how white the face was where the beard had been, compared to the sunkissed non-hairy rest of my face.

Anyway, Sam started off the hot towel treatment before finding something better to do, and handed me over to the expert hands of a lovely lady who did the shaving and massage. They didn't spare the hot towels either. I think no fewer than 8 hot towels were used during the making of this shave.

To top it off, Sam wouldn't take payment, telling me it was on the house. Sam being a close friend of my brother probably had something to do with it, rather than the fact I came in looking like a charity case.

I was actually a bit out of it after such a relaxing experience. Apparently, people often leave the shop, walk left, then regain their bearings and walk back the other way, a bit dazed. I know how they feel, and I recommend it.

We waved goodbye to Sam and headed home. A quick stop at the house and we were back into town to meet a friend for coffee and to show off the baby. The wife went off to pick up three cigars for later on, when we would be meeting Raul the wise and Johnny D, and I went off with the baby to catch up with our friend Linda.

When the wife returned, I was nicely surprised to see what else she had with her. Apart from the three cigars which were to be smoked by the three amigos later, she picked up another 11 cigars, some Rocky Patel's, Romeo y Julietas and some new ones I never heard of before.

After coffee and a lovely catchup with Linda, we were back to the house. I waited about 5 minutes before running off to have one of the new cigars at the brothers house. I chose a Macanudo Maduro which I'm happy to report was fantastic.

I was impressed with Macanudo maduro. Macanudo might be one of the biggest sellers in the U.S. but I don't believe they're as popular over here, not yet anyway. This particular maduro was a slow burner, sweet as expected, full of smoke. It had a creamy choclate and coffee taste and was one of the most enjoyable cigars I've had in a while.

A couple of beers later and we were on our way into town to meet our friends.

We had a special surprise in that an Johnny D flew in from Luxembourg at short notice, just to have a cigar with myself and Raul. There may have been some other reasons for the visit, I can't quite remember, but I'm pretty sure that a cigar with the boys was the main and most important one.

Johnny brought some Ramon Allones Specially selected with him which we went with, while Raul tried his best to teach me how to pronounce Allones correctly...Ahyoneyz...or something like that. We had a blast, more of our friends showed up and things kept going until around 1am when we called it a night.

On the way home, myself, the wife and the brother were in a taxi which had to stop behind a car that appeared to be abandoned. After 5 minutes, my brother got out to investigate with me following him a minute later. It turned out the car was an unmarked police car. When the two brave policemen returned, I politely suggested that they could have parked up on the pavement instead of blocking the road. They didn't respond very well to this and as a result, I was nearly arrested.

So a close shave with a blade to start the day and a close shave with the law to end it.