Chapter Two (not so much this time as I am on the road)

So the lack of pigmentation in the hair follicles by my temples that only appeared in one mirror was clearly a sign that something was afoot. But then I saw what I thought were wrinkles in the skin around my eyes, a pair of crow’s feet at the corner of each eye; a sunken hollow around each eye socket; long latitudinal furrows across my brow. You could say that I was already aged and why was I worrying about these cranial crinkles, surely I should be getting used to them especially at my age and at this point in my career.

I wasn’t so worried about the formation of these features but it was how they became more exaggerated in the mirror in the flat at home. The mirror at work showed the usual dulled effects of the lined around the creases of my face, however after coming back from work I would be able to see that the lines had increased in width and depth, they exhibited an slightly darker pinkish hue as if they have recently been excavated by a lone archaeologist digging preliminary excavation trenches. I would rub the tips of my fingers along the grooves and as I looked at my reflection I saw that an accumulation of debris appeared on the skin. Yet, if I drew my attention away from that polished reflective surface I would gain a better view of my finger s and there would be no remains of what I thought may have been skin.

So I think to myself, “You know when you suddenly look at yourself in a mirror you see something that you hadn’t seen before, well maybe this is just the same with the wrinkles, the creases, the furrows…It’s a bit like that picture of the naked girl that leans back on her legs with her hand through her hair, however, if you were to look at it in a slightly different perspective you would see the profile of a moustachioed professor, some even say Dr. Freud. You know the one, they used to be sold as postcards from Athena, you know the poster shop – the one on a corner of two streets in Canterbury, near the Butter Market. And it was a black and white postcard that would slowly turn yellow with age.” As I thought these things, I also thought to myself, “I never used to talk to myself like this, bloody hell!”

I pulled open a drawer in the desk that acted as a sideboard and a place for storing congealed cereal in bowls from hastily eaten breakfasts, I extracted an old diary and opened it to the first of those blank pages at the end where you can write your own notes. I decided to keep a record of these mystery apparitions, these facial fallacies if such a thing exists.

Grey hairs
Crow’s feet
Hollowed eye sockets
Forehead furrows

Nothing much to be worried about that surely some hair colourant and a tube of skin cream could sort out. Or that is what I thought until I woke up on Saturday morning. (Tomorrow's posting to come)

I can now added hidden and some not so hidden patches of psoriasis. It has left my elbows and knees migrating to the scalp, ears, eyebrows and eyelids.