AS I AM SURE you have worked out for yourself, I am not a vain man. You really cannot get anyone less stuck-up than me. There is a theory that it is in our nature to show off and that the only people who are not full of themselves to a certain extent are those who have nothing to be proud of. Being my size, I think it is because I have rather too much of everything.
Unlike some people of my ken, I don’t check my look each time I pass a mirror; I don’t buy the latest fashions, and I don’t shave my legs. Waxing them for charity doesn’t count and it was only the unsteady hand of an excited fundraiser that meant the sticky tape ripped off part of my bikini line. I didn’t know what that was until I had it plucked.
The fact is that, nowadays, men are more concerned about how they look, if what I read is correct. A lot of men who even I know admit they moisturise. Pah. Whatever next?
But maybe I should just explain that just because I hardly ever go out without being liberally smeared with Avon Skin So Soft I wouldn’t want you to think I had turned over a new leaf. No, I use it only to keep away the midges.
It is the only thing that works. I have tried the well-known alternatives of taking large quantities of whisky, Marmite or garlic, but I just got wobbly, sick or smelly in that order.
One year, I took the advice of a helpful friend from Ness who declared that if I had a drumstick of guga before going to the peats, the oily nourishment would be circulating in my system by the time the first slab was thrown and the tiny airborne bloodsuckers would flee over the hills.
They didn’t and I just got wobbly, sick and smelly all at the same time.
So I am sticking with the Avon Calling lady’s ointment. In fact, I am wearing it right now. I am just being careful.
Who says you don’t get swarms in February of culicoides impunctatus, to give them their right name? You can’t be too sure. But isn’t that aroma simply gorge?
And it just so happens that my repellent of choice does wonders also for the firmness of my epidermis and keeps it in the pink. After all, it is a big organ, in my case bigger than most, and I have to keep it in tip-top condition for whatever it comes up against.
A while back, I think I told you, I took to drinking. Not the beverages served up in the licensed hostelries of the burgh of Stornoway, you understand, but just water. Every women’s magazine I pick up in waiting-rooms and on the bedside table opposite mine claims that drinking eight glasses of HO, as well as scoffing five half-plates of fruit and veg, is the key to vitality, happiness and a youthful, pink glow.
So when the people who distribute the water that Geri Halliwell drinks asked me to try it out for them and write up my conclusions, I took up the challenge.
They sent me cases of Willow Water from a hole in the ground in Cumbria and I began glugging. Do you know, I think there may be something in it.
I started properly on New Year’s Day, a time when people have been known to have a noggin or seven. From midnight to midnight, I drank only Willow Water and, just to make it interesting, I had nothing to eat, either.
Now, after six or seven weeks, did it work? Well, I don’t quite look like a Spice Girl, although I am scary, but, er, my skin is softer.
I can’t believe I just said that. What is happening to me? I am speaking like they do in the TV ads.
But wait till I tell you about my plukes. You should see them. They’ve gone. Ooh, they were bad. If I was going to anything posh, like a wedding or a divorce party, I used to have to squeeze them a few days beforehand. Now, there is nothing left to squeeze. Not on my face or chest, anyway.
Despite my own lack of vanity, I have been forced to put a more up-to-date photo up there beside my name. This follows ridiculous and distressing allegations which were levelled against me by certain readers of my own parish.
I was, they decided, deliberately getting the Press and Journal to publish an old photo of me each week.
One woman reasoned that it was because I was very vain and desperate to pass myself off as younger than I am.
Her proof was that in the image she so obviously scrutinised closely in recent copies of this paper, I was sporting a rather dashing wee goatee beard. My wee tickler, as my wife called it.
The dear reader pointed out that when she had seen me in the fruit and veg aisle in Tesco recently, that particular fungus around my mouth was not in evidence.
So I was at it, apparently, to put her concerns in the lingo of Seaforth Road.
While it is, indeed, true that the goatee became unattached during an episode of reckless early-morning speed shaving, while an impatient member of my family was rapping the door and threatening to wet the landing, it was, indeed, the case that I just never got round to snapping my naked chin for the P&J.
It is, of course, utter nonsense to suggest that I would do anything to deceive the magnificent readership.
So, to mark this column’s move to Mondays, I now offer a current representation of my jowls.
Oh dear. You can see that the lady was right. There is no doubt I do look older, fatter and more confused than ever before.
Happy now, Mary?
