Anyone who attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst will never look at a shaving razor in the same way. Ever since my officer training days, when you had to shave on exercise at 4 a.m. in a cold, wet forest, unable to feel your fingers, shaving has been an important topic. Having escaped those dank woods, I’ve tried to embrace shaving at its most comfortable and alluring: using a stylish cut-throat razor, aided by rose-scented shaving cream whipped into a lather by a badger-hair brush.
That doesn’t cut it in airport security, where even a lone razor blade could get you pinned down on the floor. So I have tried to find a happy medium, reverting back to the type of Gillette razor I used at Sandhurst. But good luck trying to find a two-bladed Gillette Excel blade. They are getting rarer.
You can just about find them on Amazon, though they are being replaced by more expensive models. The shaving company keeps adding another blade to its razor heads (I think we could be up to around six) along with flashy new names. These new models won’t fit any of the old razor heads. It’s a bit like new phones, where the likes of Apple purposely render everything that came before useless. Modern smartphones don’t have headphone jacks, which means – yawn – you have to buy Bluetooth headphones.
Razorblades are now treated as luxury goods, meaning they are locked behind security tags to stop people stealing them. I recently encountered a mini Fort Knox in Boots and looked around for a member of staff to unlock the goods. They were nowhere to be seen. I had to start breathing exercises as The Overwhelm took hold, not helped by annoying background music. After a while, I thought: sod this, I’ll try Tesco. Again, racks of shaving kit behind security fittings, along with that maddening music. Who is behind this non-stop psy-op against the British public?
Then, a trip to Berlin last month helped me see the light. I bought a pack of ten disposable razors for under two euros, having flown in sans shaver. Each seems to last over a week. Not only is that a bargain but you can grab a bag off the shop shelf like in those halcyon, law-abiding days. You can also fly, I’ve found, with a bundle of them in your cabin baggage.
Not only did I exit airport security in a better frame of mind, but the next morning, I found that each stroke along my stubbly jaw was accompanied by a satisfying feeling: that I had stuck it to the corporate world. I was not, for the first time in years, being entirely ripped off.
Who is behind this non-stop psy-op to against the British public?
Saint Francis rejected the economic system of calculated wealth. His reward for his privations, in addition to receiving the stigmata from a six-winged Seraphim, was living in a state of mind akin to being micro-dosed on acid. Francis wrote of his intense love for nature and wildlife, of being able to see beyond the filter – before his body gave in during his mid-forties.
Not surprisingly, few people want to go down this route. But you can make small gestures in that direction, as offered by the disposable razor. It’s not about embracing the Cult of Zero or home-organising guru Marie Kondo’s decluttering creed. You can still have a fancy shaver; you can still treat yourself to nicer things. But equip yourself with other options – typically simpler – for when necessary.
We called this ‘reversionary mode’ in the tank world, when the British Army’s Challenger 2 tank occasionally decided not to work and the onboard computer system packed up. You went back to hand-cranking the crosshairs onto the target. Not as quick, but it worked.
As technology takes hold of our lives, it seems all the more important to be able to resort to, and know how to use, reversionary modes. As my Sandhurst colour sergeant had to remind me amid the flash bangs and swirling grenade smoke of platoon attacks, when my brain was about to explode following those dreadful awakenings in the woods on exercise: ‘Keep it simple, stupid.’ It’s an important piece of advice as we navigate the inane contradictions of the modern era.
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