And another thing

iwas thinking to myself the other day – I wish I was a vampire. No wait a minute, let me explain. You may or may not know that vampires don’t have reflections. That’s one of the tests of a vampire … put them in front of a mirror and there’s nothing there. That’s how you know.

I was fleetingly aspiring to be one because at a certain age, as entropy takes its course, one doesn’t want to look at one’s reflection as much as one used to.

I caught sight of myself in the mirror the other day and thought … what a wreck! It was hot, I hadn’t shaved and it was just a glance but it unsettled me.

Of course the obvious answer is – don’t look at yourself in the bloody mirror, right?

I wrote a poem about this recently (a sonnet) about how “in a certain light I look all right”. It made me think of that Seinfeld episode in which he is dating a girl who looks terrific or awful, depending on the lighting. I think I look pretty good in dim lighting but can’t spend the rest of my days indoors with the curtains closed and the lamps on. But I admit that’s a nice thought.

I was complaining again about how I looked after viewing myself in the mirror when my wife cruelly accused me of being vain. Vain? Moi?

Guilty as charged but that’s okay. Vanity is quite biblical after all. As it says in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes “Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher … all is vanity.” So this vanity is nothing new, obviously.

So what to do in the face of this? I did flag the idea of cosmetic surgery but don’t want to be one of those people whose skin is so tight they look perpetually startled. And as my wife said, once you start, where do you stop? I guess I can just let nature take its course although I am fighting a rearguard action by looking after myself – drinking water, going to the gym, applying moisturiser – men’s moisturiser of course!

Because I don’t want to end up looking like that painting poor old Dorian Gray kept in his attic in Oscar Wilde’s famous novel. If I’m going to look like the picture of Dorian Gray I want to be the before … not the after.