I have a beard.

But - I have not grown a beard.

I don't like the idea of growing a beard; it makes it sound like I'm doing something positive. Instead I have simply stopped shaving.

This is not a decision I took lightly. It took me all of 3 seconds to decide to stop. I stepped out of the shower and went to get a new blade for my razor from the cupboard. Finding the cupboard bare of razor blades but full of soaps stolen from hotels and bottles of Night Nurse, I decided the easiest thing was to just stop shaving.

I have even continued to "not shave" despite My Canadian Girlfriend having bought all the constituent parts required for me to have a shave and having arranged them nicely in places around the house where I can't fail to see them. Not even my Mum and my Little Sister pleading with me to remove "that thing" have had any affect. Getting facial hair is not unusual, every couple of years I like to grow some until I see a photo of myself and realise I look like a twat.

It has been a few weeks now, I must be getting better at avoiding cameras, and I'm growing to like my beard. It gives me something to play with during long boring work meetings and also gives me an extra line of defence when it comes to dribbling toothpaste from my mouth and dropping it on my shirt.

And despite being on the losing side, I have played well at football since I stopped shaving. I am a very superstitious person. I always wear the same kit if I played well the week before, I get dressed in exactly the same order, I always take the end away from the hill in the first half and I like to put my water bottle inside the left hand post.

And since its bad luck not to be superstitious - I'm afraid to shave. I played poorly when I was well shaven and now I am unkempt and homeless looking I am playing well. This is a surprise, because it's almost impossible to name a bearded footballer that was any good. Gary Birtles had a beard and he was, until Kleberson arrived, one of United's worst signings. Gerd Muller, Socrates and occasionally George Best are the only players of any note who had beards.

I enjoy bearded life. I have managed to walk past an old friend in the Arndale Centre without being recognised. And this wasn't a celebrity "I've got a cap on so you don't recognise me - go on then I'll sign a couple of autographs" attempt at not being spotted either. It was like wearing a Next suit - I became invisible.

The days pass. My Canadian Girlfriend turns towards me as Masterchef finishes and takes both my hands in her hands. I fear that I am facing some form of beard intervention.

"Look about your beard," she says "I don't want you to take this the wrong way but you know I don't like facial hair. And this is getting beyond a joke. It's not even a real beard. I've seen better ones on 12 year olds. It's just side burns, a bad 70s 'tache and some fluff on your chin. If you could grow a real beard I'm sure I'd like it but this is just wrong."

"Happy Valentines to you too." I say.

I'm not one to admit it out loud but she is right.
Once puberty kicks in this is going to look really cool.

"See you all Monday!" I say to my co-workers, at the place that if I named I would have to kill you, as I head off into the setting sun on Friday afternoon. I let out a little evil cackle inside knowing full well that I don't intend on being in on Monday. It's Superbowl Monday and normally that means that I'll take a day off and watch the game over breakfast. But since I have run out of Holidays this year, I am planning on taking a sickie!

I have yet to decide just how naughty I am going to be. If I am going to be very naughty then I am off all day Monday with something that has kept me up all night. If I am only going to be slightly naughty then it's an emergency optician's appointment and I'm in work after lunch. Both of which are credible lies. The first does not require me to sound ill when I call in, just disorientated and tired. The second is completely understandable because a) my optician is hot and b) I wear contact lenses.

My plan is hatched with extreme deviousness.

It seems much less devious when I'm running from the tram stop back to my flat on Sunday because I need the toilet. This would make visit number 3 in a little under two hours.

"I can't believe I'm ill! There's no point taking a sickie when I'm ill." I say to My Canadian Girlfriend as I try and mask the smell with multiple flushes and a squirt of Glade Fresh. "I'm being punished!"

"It's probably just psychosomatic." she replies.

We head over to my parents for Sunday Dinner. Their toilets are notoriously difficult to flush, I am not sure how I will cope if the pills I have taken don't stop my psychopathic illness. The meal is a pretty normal affair - soup to start, followed by roast chicken, apple crumble as desert with coffee, cheese and biscuits served by the computer as I run Spybot to try and untangle the mess my dad has managed to get himself into. During this time, my Canadian Girlfriend wraps herself up in a blanket and parks herself with all the Saturday and Sunday Magazines my parent's haven't bothered to recycle - they claim that they simply keep them just for her to read but I know that they're just far too lazy to walk to carry them out to the recycling.

Thankfully, due to the number of "MySearchBarWeb" tools and cookies from websites I wish I didn't know my parents had looked at - I have plenty of time to spend trying to figure out how to flush their toilet. I take advantage of this break in proceedings because coupled with the fact that the Diacalm is wearing off I need to head upstairs to leave behind most of the meal I have just enjoyed.

If I was one of my colleagues I would find it very hard to believe that I was really ill the day after the Superbowl. So to prove that I was ill, even if it was psychotropic, I take a time stamped photo of my anal expulsions and using my Parent's patented pump-flush action on the toilet to get rid of the evidence.

My anti-Semitic illness is getting worse. I am home and have just expunged the apple crumble. I am sure I am being punished for thinking about faking illness. One of the things I had planned to do on Monday afternoon when I was fake-sick, before going to the gym, was to clean my en-suite because it needed cleaning. Now it REALLY needs cleaning. It looks like I'm going to have to clean it in between using the toilet in the bathroom my Canadian Girlfriend uses, which will also need cleaning by mid-morning.

The night passes off without incident, thankfully. I ring work trying not to be too graphic but also making sure that they knew something serious was up and it was not a semantic illness. I take my Canadian Girlfriend off to work avoiding the result of the Superbowl by not turning anything but her on.

I arrive home and have my normal post-breakfast poo. The only non-normal characteristic of which is the fact that I do it before breakfast. I sit down and turn on the DVD recorder. The Superbowl has not recorded. I am being punished.

Somehow, using a mix between covering the computer screen with my hand and not being able to see anything without my glasses on, I find out that an edited version of the Superbowl is on Sky Sports at 1pm. I take my Diacalm and plot a return to my parents to borrow their cable.