Columnists

Hair today, where tomorrow? – this month on Beat

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Since Gillette made Pogonotomy (the art of shaving yourself) possible – even with a hangover – there has been no excuse for facial hair.

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He only does it to annoy because he knows it teases.

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Why should human-human partnerships be the only kind to be celebrated in society and recognised in law? Is that not a blatantly speciesist thing?

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The Astral Game of Chess…

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“that this was not the feather of angel that has fallen…but more the feather from a FALLEN ANGEL”

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What is this thing called Love, and other references?

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Without the goal of explaining love we wouldn’t have most of the Beatles oeuvre or Sidney Carton’s wretched lines of sacrifice, and Shakespeare would have been an unhappy farmer.

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The Devil’s Party

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Sometimes unrelieved goodness can get rather cloying. Sometimes you need the destructive power of negative energy, just to shake things up and just to restore balance in the world.

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Pulling Faces, Seriously Single Grapples With Middleage

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Beyond the age of fifty, what people fret about is the dying of the light. Theirs.

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Your Messed Up Life Still Thrills Me

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He smokes too much, drinks as if it’s an endurance event, fucks like his dick will be cut off tomorrow for crimes against womanhood.

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The Walking School – The Amputee Chronicles II

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I’m dizzy at first but the feeling clears away like smoke dispersing in a room. I’m standing up properly for the first time in five weeks.

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Injury Time Revisited

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The bones of my pelvis had twisted, and in particular the curved structure at the front known as the pubic bone or pubic arch had pulled apart and ‘opened up’

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The Piano Exam – fear spelt out in black and white

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By the end of what should have been scales and arpeggios I was shaking like a washing machine on spin cycle.

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