IT SEEMS that the Revd Matthew Burns, of Holy Trinity,
Rhostyllen, in St Asaph diocese, can never quite make up his mind
whether he looks better with a beard or not. He tends to grow one
nearly every year, he tells me, and shaves it off a few months
later. So it seemed a good idea, when they were fund-raising for
some electrical repairs on his Victorian Gothic church, and his
beard had been in place for seven or eight months, to have a
sponsored shave.
The deed was done one evening, in
church, by a well-known barber from Wrexham, who, Mr Burns says,
first gave an entertaining talk on the history of barbering and all
that the barber-surgeons used to do.
When it came to taking off the beard,
it was a proper wet shave, with all the necessary towels, and it
took place in the church because there was more space for the
audience. The event raised a healthy £450, and, for the moment, Mr
Burns remains beardless. But not for ever. "Perhaps I'll start
again next year," he told me.