I have just had my nose waxed for the first time.

We've been going to a Kurdish barber shop in Seaton for about a year now. I'm trying to learn a little Kurmanji, and I practice with the men who work there and get them to tell me about politics. They are amazingly good with my smallest offspring's luxuriant hair, which would shame a gorgon. I have rather less, which they mow short. But confronted with my disorganised facial scraggle they somehow find symmetry of a sort.

Today there was a Significant Pause. The neat moustache was wholly ruined by what lurked above. In fact I am careful to trim my nostrils, though obviously not to their standard.

"Wax your nose?"

"Errrrrmmmm..."

Every man in there was watching me.

"Okay."

So now, for all you doubters, I have joined the ranks of cis men who have had gender affirming surgery.

I fully intend to keep the sparse grey scrub elsewhere, and in fact I am put off by unnatural hairlessness in others, but at least I know a bit about what it's like now.