■ I have this addiction; it dates all the way back to early childhood, writes Barry Rosenberg

Growing up, I never liked my physical appearance. Nose large and beaked like a hawk.

Weak recessive chin. And atop it all, a skull like a modified conehead, as though the birthing doc yanked me into mortal existence with a super powerful suction device. I wasn’t an ugly kid, really. I just had a head shaped like a rugby ball.

My teenage years were not happy ones. Due to this opinion of my looks I was shy and didn’t fare well with girls. At parties, the pretty ones were quickly grabbed up by the guys who had standard-shaped heads and thought themselves suave and handsome.

When I got into my late teens and had the smarts to earn a scholarship to uni, I gained a bit of confidence. My first girlfriend, who later became my wife, was actually quite lovely.

I figured she had an astigmatism. In my 20s I grew a beard to camouflage the weak chin and always wore a cap to hide the Everest up top.

So, what’s all this have to do with my addiction, which didn’t show itself until my mid-70s.

I live on a long, beautiful beach. I walk it every single day.

The beach is full of debris washed in off the surf. Most people see this as unsightly rubbish. I view it as a magnificent opportunity for free material to feed a habit.

Here’s why.

One morning, strolling along, a small chunk of wood caught my eye. It made me giggle. I could see in its oval shape a face. I stood looking down upon it. Then I stepped past, stopped, turned around and stared some more.

My giggle turned into a guffaw. The face I saw was mine. Cartoony, sure, but me all right. Absolutely.

Look, I’m moderately artistic. I see images with my mind’s eye – I designed all the covers of my 10 published books – but lack the skills, either by hand or digital-graphically, to actually produce them as works of art. But this new addiction did not require such skills.

All it needed to manifest and grow was a small assortment of test pots of paint, a few old cut-down brushes and a genuinely warped sense of the visually bizarre.

That first piece of wood I’d spotted on the beach, onto which I painted a Barry-face that gave me delight, was like non-toxic heroin shot into my bloodstream.

I have over the years provided it with brothers. Dozens. Scores.

Not counting the ones I’ve given away as gifts (always treasured), my current family of me’s, situated aligning my deck and scattered around inside the house, currently runs between 40 and 50. All different, yet all the same: eyes, green; nose, orange; lips, red; beard and long hair, white. Sometimes the hair will be strips of wool or truncated shoelaces.

Now, here’s the thing about this addiction of mine. I do not look for appropriate wood pieces. My eyes when beach walking forever peer out over the spectacular waters towards Whale and White Islands.

Plus, I’ve so often exhorted myself: NO MORE! Forget it. The wood seems to jump into my hand seeking life.

Over the past few years, I’ve even branched out with a collection of large death masks and other demonic imagery from beach flotsam. All with painted scary facial features, of course.

Upon seeing the finished work in my garden, beach-walking mates will tell me: “I must have passed that log a hundred times and never saw it as a face.”

I can only reckon they haven’t properly blurred the thin line between creative and crazy, and adopted for themselves a fascinating addiction.

Then again, chances are they weren’t fortunate enough to have a head shaped like a rugby ball when they were kids.