THE DAY I SAW A GIANT AND HOW IT MADE ME THINK ABOUT BEARDS

Do you reckon giants still exist? Only, I think I saw one on the way to work. He was bald with a massive bushy beard, dark hair sprouting from his ears, and a toothy grin. He wore an enormous stripy tee-shirt and he had a huge, square, shiny belt buckle. Oh yes, and he was also very tall.

Why do fairytale giants always have beards? Come to think of it, dwarves too. Dwarves are always stroking a thick mane of chin hair or twiddling wispy moustachios. Is it an extreme-height thing? Some sort of attempt to blend in?

Then there's the man with a beard that looks like a scarf. I see him sometimes. He's of normal height, Scarfbeard, and he's young and cool: skinny jeans, pointy shoes, cropped hair. Wrapped around his lower face and neck like an explosion of fuzzy flora, is a curly mass of irritating hedgerow.

Beards are 'in' at the moment. I'm not sure how that happened because most women object to it. Nonetheless, young hipsters with an impetus to prove some sort of rugged masculinity are growing full on facial hair.

It's annoying because I had a beard for most of my twenties - when it wasn't cool. As soon as it was, my own facial hair threw a strop and promptly went a bit grey. Not that I care particularly about such things. Greys after all, are supposed to be a 'mark of wisdom' and I could use a little wisdom.

Perhaps beards were always naturally associated with shiftiness. In folklore, giants are sort of ignorant or malevolent most of the time aren't they? Dwarves also are supposed to bury their treasure deep in the mountains, hoarding their wealth in the granite rocks and the deepest mines - untrusting, beady-eyed secret-keepers.

Perhaps somewhere in the subconscious we believe that the beard is a mark of someone hiding something.

Giants have clubs, dwarves have secrets, sailors have unspeakable adventures. Even the white-bearded Captain Birdseye has that little twinkle in his eye that has nothing to do with fish fingers.

Anyway, it occurs to me that I shouldn't go around making sweeping statements about people of extreme height or extreme beardiness (or extreme fictional-ness either I suppose). If you are a giant though, and you're fed up of people shouting 'fee-fi-fo-fum' across the street... well why not have a little shave and see what happens?