On Sarahs and Smiles.

I was out in the garden at twilight this evening, contemplating the trees, the birds and bats, the local little people, my navel, that sort of thing, when I suddenly felt the urge to say: ‘Where is Sarah? I want Sarah.’ And so I did (say it, that is.)

Of course, only I know which of the three notable Sarahs I had in mind. You don’t, which seems fair enough to me. (Clue: the one with the loveliest smile. Does that help?)

The thing is, though, I then remembered an episode of Inspector Morse. (My favourite cop show, and the episode in question was one of the best. It was the only one in which the word ‘metempsychosis’ was used. Such matters are memorable to me.) There’s a point at which our intrepid Oxford detective is feeling spaced out and paranoid on account of having been tracked and toyed with by an ingenious adversary, and has more latterly succumbed to smoke inhalation courtesy of the bad guy’s nefarious activities.

‘Where is Lewis?’ he asks while the paramedic is trying to get him into an ambulance. ‘I want Lewis.’

In Morse’s case, the plea derived purely from the fact that he was feeling spaced out and paranoid, and Sergeant Lewis was the only person in whom he placed any degree of trust. Such is not the case with Sarah, whichever one I had in mind. I don’t trust Sarah (any of them) any more than I trust anybody else. I don’t do trust for the same reason that I don’t do religion. I just wanted to see her smile at me, because when Sarah smiles at me it takes my mind off the health issues for all of sixty seconds (approximately.) I just thought it an odd coincidence, and I’m sure that’s all it was.

So then I watched an episode of House in which the patient’s troubles – everything from vomiting blood to wetting himself to seeing double to having his skin turn yellow – all derived from low testosterone; and they mentioned that men experience a drop in testosterone when babies arrive on the scene. I made a post once about the fact that I’d suddenly started noticing babies, didn’t I, so maybe all things really are connected in this best of all possible worlds. Wouldn’t that be nice?

So should I now go on to talk about the latest development on the health issue front? No, I’ll read some more of my book instead.

Postscript:

After writing this I realised something:

I’ve noticed that some attractive people look less attractive when they smile, while some unattractive people become attractive when they smile. But the really lucky ones are the attractive people who become even more attractive when they smile. I never belonged in any of these categories. I’m one of the rare exceptions who simply go from bad to worse, in consequence of which they need to develop permanent frown lines if they’re to have the confidence to hold their heads up in public.