I remember standing in a public toilet once, washing my
hands. My friend Alan Steele was standing next to me, also washing his hands. He
looked like the second bloke from the left in this picture of the Beach Boys:
There were mirrors on the facing wall. I looked at his face,
and then at mine, and then back to his, and thought ‘Why can’t I look normal
like him?’ (It was at a pub in Bagnall, Staffordshire. I have a good memory for
face issues.)
Random Aside:
Poor Alan. He
emigrated to Australia
in his early twenties and embraced the lifestyle. I met his sister many years
later and she told me he’d become a suburban, 250lb couch potato living
entirely on junk food and having difficulty making it to the local takeaway and
back. Such a shame. When I knew him he was fit and strong, and had a reputation
for doing crazy things like diving into an ice-covered pool and having to be
rescued and resuscitated because he was semi-conscious and probably would have
drowned otherwise. (I was the one who took charge of the resuscitation procedure
because I’d learned about that sort of thing in the navy. Clever, aren’t I?
Strange-looking, but clever. I suppose it’s compensation of a sort.) We were
all in awe of dear Abo, as he was affectionately known, and it helped that he
looked normal.
Anyway, here’s a picture of the cool uncle Dmitri, with whom I have
one thing in common…
…those lines across the bridge of the nose. But is it enough
to have prominent frown lines? I don’t think so, somehow. I frowned in jest at a
friend’s little daughter once and she backed off, whimpering. She’d done well
to cope with the way I looked generally.
So what do I do about it? Nothing. Too late. What I need now
is a bell tower to live in and some gypsy dancing girls to rescue. Some hope.
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