Wisdom is love
an excerpt

As soon I as knew for sure I was going to be a philosopher, I started growing my beard.

I dutifully shaved on the morning of A-Level results, just in case I didn't get onto my philosophy course, but after that, not at all. The problem was, my beard didn't really look like a philosopher's beard. It was thin and straggly. I'd never really tried to grow a beard before - well, I wasn't a proper philosopher, was I? Just someone who read the odd book - but I kind of assumed I'd have a big bushy bird's nest. The sort of beard you could stroke thoughtfully, lose fallacies in, that sort of thing. Not only was my beard slightly pathetic, it was also tinged kind of ginger. I'm not ginger, by the way. My hair is dark brown, and still in that floppy cut from when I decided I was a musician. Couldn't be bothered with the music after a few months of painstaking guitar practise and a distinct lack of groupies, but I actually quite liked the hair, so I kept it. But my point, my *point* (because philosophers always have one) is that my hair is not ginger. So what was going on with my beard? What kind of philosopher has a *ginger* beard. Nietzsche wasn't ginger. Plato wasn't ginger. Descartes wasn't ginger. Oh, you know what, actually. Plato could have been ginger, I mean, I've never seen a picture of him like I have the other two. But I don't think Ancient Greeks really go in for ginger. Greek people tend to be darker anyway, don't they? Shame. If Plato had had a slightly ginger-tinged straggly beard, that would have been cool.

I had these images in my head of Fresher's Week. People would ask me what I was studying, and I could just stroke my beard and they'd *know*, they'd just *know.* Unfortunately, this didn't work out.