Losing My Mind?

This morning as I was driving to work, I thought I saw a polar pear in a field just outside Woodingdean. It turned out to be a white horse, but for a brief moment I was convinced. The worrying thing is that I wasn't in the least bit peturbed by this prospect, I just thought to myself "Oh look, there's a polar bear" and carried on driving. I really need a holiday.

Coming to Terms with Vanity

A few weeks ago I bought my first tube of anti-wrinkle cream. This was a big step for one who always swore to grow old gracefully, without such trivial cosmetic interventions. As a self-righteous (blissfully wrinkle-free) teenager, I was quite adamant about this, refusing to believe that I would ever be shallow enough to let such aesthetic degeneration bother me.

Then this time last year, my first grey hair appeared. I pulled it out and stuck it in my diary; but what if more came? Thankfully I've always been into dyeing my hair for fun anyway, so followers of this lone crusader against youthfulness would easily be quashed. Little did I know that he'd be sending in back-up in the form of a couple of persistent frown lines between my eyebrows. These were made worse by the constant glowering brought on by the pain of having a fractured jaw and a mouth full of broken teeth, and are now visible even when I'm not actually frowning.

So yes, I take back everything I ever said on the subject. Give me the creams; give me the botox - I don't want wrinkles! Cheeky laugh lines are one thing, but ugly angry furrows in the middle of one's face are frankly unacceptable. Maybe these supposedly miracle unguents are all a fallacy, but just feeling as though I'm doing something about it makes my face relax a little, thereby forestalling any further encroachment by the evil enemy lines. I was surprised to discover that several of my friends (of both sexes) have also been revising their opinions about facial rejuvanation since suffering the first distressing signs of ageing.

If I'm prepared to get my mouth cut open and have my teeth fixed for aesthetic reasons (as I am in the process of doing), then why not my face or my body? OK, so maybe I'm not quite in need of a face-lift just yet, but I'd no longer rule it out. Clearly I've inherited my late grandmother's vanity, if none of her natural glamour. I don't think she ever had surgery, but she certainly wouldn't have gone out of the house without make-up. And now I totally understand why.

Photo by Giletti on Flickr

Dawn Inspiration

It wasn't the first time I've walked into the kitchen of a morning to the sight of a fox on the lawn outside, but today's encounter was a little special. This particular fox is a regular visitor to our garden (Ant took this picture in January last year), easily identified by his unfortunately shabby coat, which is largely absent from about half way down its back. Frusrated at not being able to tend to this poor creature's malady, I have tried before to approach him with catfood and milk, but clearly of a nervous disposition, he always runs away. Even Marcel, the most timid cat in the world, appears unphased by his presence, happily trotting past him this morning as he sat curled up right in the middle of the grass. The Ted Hughes poem Roe Deer sprung to mind as he rasied a sleepy head and held my gaze for what seemed like several minutes, until with a stretch and a skip, he was off back over the fence. In Hughes's (far superior) words "the curtain had blown aside" between our separate worlds, suspending us in a magical moment, before returning him to whatever it is foxes do in the day (hang out in their dens, presumably), and me to the usual morning routine of tea-making and cat-feeding - "Revising its dawn inspiration...Back to the ordinary".