Fatal Traction

I had a memorable journey home last night. 

After another deeply frustrating day at work, I left the building and climbed into my old banger of a car, a car that has been reliable but is not long for this world. 

I cranked up my mp3 jukebox and set off on a journey home that normally takes around fifteen minutes (up to half an hour if the traffic is bad). 

I felt the stress and frustration dissipating to the dulcet tones of rock music and soon afterwards I was in the zone. 

What is the zone? 

The zone is the place where I drift when I am relaxed. I am still alert and can function normally but I my mind has opened the door to my imagination and I have willingly tumbled in to allow myself to flirt with my bizarre thoughts.

When I am in the zone I am on autopilot, still able to drive, still able to concentrate, but at the same time in a world of my own where reality is warped and weirdness rules. 

I was driving along and I turned onto a main road where I pulled up behind a double decker bus at a traffic light. 

I found myself staring at the back of the bus, still in my weird reverie, when I noticed the advert on the back of it. Suddenly I was intrigued. 

The words I read were:

I used to hate my bust but now I LOVE it.

The words were accompanied by a picture of a rather attractive young lady called Sophie who was singing the praises of a plastic surgeon specialising in breast implants and all manner of cosmetic enhancements.

Sophie was very nice – so nice that I became entranced. She was very pretty and was thrusting her ample bosom out to me as if to say:

My breasts aren’t just for me, Dave. They are for you as well. Would you like to cop a feel?

At this point, I can imagine any female readers looking for the mouse to close the window and shouting YOU SEXIST PIG at the computer. Before you do, please understand that I can’t help this disgusting train of thought. I am a man governed by rampant hormones that take over my normal rational mind and cause me to say words like:

PHHHWWOOOARRR!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s something I can barely control. Normally I find myself saying things like STOP IT DAVE - JUST  STOP IT!!!! and then can regain control. 

Oh – and before you say it – yes I do still have rampant hormones even at my age. I may be approaching fifty faster than the speed of light but I am still a man with feelings and desires, even if the sensible part of my mind allows me to subdue them. 

I can’t help it.

I am a man. 

I am also trying my best NOT to be a dirty old man. And as I type this an image of Megan Fox stretched out over a Harley Davidson wearing hot pants has just entered my head. 

See what I mean? 

I can’t help it. 

GO AWAY MEGAN FOX!! YOU'RE GETTING ME IN TROUBLE WITH MY READERS!!!

There – that’s better. 

Anyway, back to the tale. 

I found myself staring at Sophie and I was in the zone, and my autopilot also became obsessed with her. Before I knew it, the bus had set off and I was driving right behind it. The rear of the bus filled my vision and I had a Cosmos Smallpiece style grin on my face.  And the bloody thing kept stopping to let people on and off (selfish bloody passengers; selfish bloody driver) causing me to almost plough into the back of it on several occasions. 

In my imagination, I saw myself talking to a policeman:

POLICEMAN: How on EARTH did you manage to crash into the back of a double decker bus?

PLASTIC MANCUNIAN: It was her. It was Sophie, thrusting her bust at me. I couldn’t help it.

POLICEMAN: Come with me sir.

Before long I was driving along, refusing to let anybody in between me and the bus and staring at Sophie. The hormone soaked beast had taken full control and was irrationally following this advert on the back of a bloody bus. 

After a while, something happened. Somewhere deep inside, I realised what was happening and I had an internal conversation: 

PLASTIC MANCUNIAN: What the bloody hell are you doing?

HORMONE SOAKED BEAST: Shut up – I’m concentrating.

PLASTIC MANCUNIAN: GET BACK IN YOUR PIT!!!

The beast was gone and I was able to regain some form of sensible normality. It was then that I realised what had happened. 

Where the bloody hell was I? 

I had stupidly and blindly followed the bus all the way into the city centre, miles out of my way. And of course, being the city centre, the traffic was horrendous. 

I turned around and battled for around half an hour to get back home. A journey that normally took fifteen minutes had taken an hour and a half. 

I walked in and saw Mrs PM and as usual I was completely honesty with her. The conversation went something like this:

MRS PM: You’re late.

PLASTIC MANCUNIAN: Yes – I ended up in Manchester . I saw this lovely woman on a bus and kind of got a little hypnotised and ended up following her into the city centre. She had a magnificent bust. You know how I feel about woman’s breasts. She – hang on dear. Why are you holding that frying pan like a club?

And now I am in hospital in traction having been savagely beaten by the woman I love. Please excuse any typing mistakes because all of my fingers are broken.

P.S. Not all of the above post is true. No Plastic Mancunians were harmed in the writing of this post.

Plastic Surgery For Plastic Mancunian?

I’ve got crow’s feet – and that doesn’t mean I’m some kind of weird avian-human hybrid.

I’m referring to the lines that appeared next to my eyes. I’ve had them for a few years now. When I look in the mirror, these grooves appear to becoming more pronounced, almost like monstrous fissures being ploughed into my skin. If you look closely at the skin around my eyes you can see a startling resemblance to the Grand Canyon.

But it’s not just my eyes.

I have deep furrows rampaging across my brow and when I frown it looks like I have been attacked by Gillette Fusion razor – not exactly the best a man can get.

And it doesn’t stop there.

I have said in the past that I look young for my age – and that is true – but I am beginning to notice more signs of aging. The closer I look at my face, the more haggard I appear to be. Jowls are being cultivated on my face, growing as if some weird farmer were spreading manure on them.

It is most unpleasant.

And I’m sure I saw a grey hair in that massive jungle on my head (though that could have been the light reflecting off a blonde hair).

I’m at a crossroads, dear reader. What should I do?

One of the choices I have is to remove all signs of aging by having cosmetic surgery. I am sure that there is a surgeon who can change my face to look like this:


What do you mean that’s impossible?

Well, of course it is – I agree. And to be honest I would rather become a wrinkly old prune than pay a gargantuan amount of cash to have my jowls hoovered, my wrinkles ironed or my facial skin lifted so that my navel ends up as a dimple on my chin.

Nevertheless, it did get me thinking. If I were crazy enough to allow myself to placed in the hands of a crazed cosmetic surgeon, what could I do to improve my looks?

Anybody who suggests being beaten with a cricket bat would make me look more attractive can stop reading now.

For the rest of you:

Surgical face lift

A surgical face lift involves having your face molested by a scalpel, resulting in your skin being sliced and diced, before repositioned great swathes of skin and stitching it all into place. The incisions are supposedly discrete so that you don’t look young with a great big scar slashed across you new visage. Usually the butchers slice along your hairline or behind your ears where they say (hope) that neither you nor anybody else will ever notice.

I tell you what, you would have to be excessively ugly, excessively old looking or so vain that you think there is an entire galaxy up your arse, to even begin to consider having your face relocated.

And if you really do have a face like a saggy old arse, don’t you think that your friends won’t notice that you now, suddenly, look twenty years younger, with skin so tight that you have a permanent leering grin on your kisser?

And if you are bald won’t there be a huge scar right across you head?

I may slowly be mutating into an albino prune but a face lift is a definite no no!

So what else is there?

Acupuncture face lift

If you believe in acupuncture, you can have an acupuncture face lift. Basically this means instead of a mad surgeon coming at your face with a scalpel and pliers, a mad acupuncturist hurls needles into your face. Apparently, by sticking a needle into certain places, you can stimulate natural collagen production, thus pumping up your skin (a bit like a bicycle pump on a football but more localised).

I guess for a while you would end up looking like this:



I tell you what, the thought of needles in my face fills me with dread so that’s another one I wouldn’t consider.

Botox

Has anybody noticed how this word almost rhymes with “bollocks”? That can’t be a coincidence. Like acupuncture, botox involves needles but unlike acupuncture, a liquid is injected into your face.

Apparently this substance prevents muscles from contracting and relaxes them thus removing lines and wrinkles.

Now I’ve seen people who have had this and to me at least they look like they have been covered in plastic. They look weird – like a showroom dummy version of their former selves.



And, you have to have an injection. I can’t stress enough how afraid of needles I am; the thought of having a needle in my arm fills me with dread – but to be injected in the face?

Forget it.

Electronic Face Lift

Before you ask, this does not involve attaching a robotic device to your face, although there is a similarity. Basically with an electronic face lift, somebody electrocutes your face. That sounds bad but it isn’t really, because we’re not talking about a massive current that will make your hair stand on end; it is a small contraption that passes microcurrents through you muscles and stimulates them, thus strengthening them and fighting off those telltale lines. Basically you are prodded with a buzzing device for a few weeks. You are electrocuted (on a microscopic scale) for an hour at a time.

Presumably when they have finished with you, your head feels like it is on fire and you could probably jump start a car with your face.
You probably look as if your face has been badly sunburnt as well.

Sounds too weird to me.

Looks like I am going to grow old gracefully and watch my face transform into a wrinkled bag of old clothes. I don’t care.

I would rather look like an old man than be ridiculed for looking like Joe 90:

Make Me Over - Slice And Dice

I have never understood the apparent fascination of my fellow countrymen with watching people on the TV being ritually humiliated before undergoing an experience that involves being hacked on an operating table.

On Channel Four in the UK there is a programme called “Ten Years Younger” where people are made to look, as the name suggests, ten years younger. When Mrs PM (who incidentally loves the programme) first brought this to my attention I sat down to watch it, more out of a morbid curiosity than a real desire to watch a fascinating piece of televisual excellence.

The host of the show is Nicky Hambleton-Jones, a South African dietician. The victim, sorry, contestant, is a person, usually a woman, who appears to be at least ten years older than she is.

We are introduced to the victim at the start of the show. Nicky basically smiles sweetly at the woman and then verbally rips her to shreds, with all the sympathy of a starving lion standing over a plump gazelle. She savages the victim’s hair, colour and texture, before moving onto the face, usually showing the audience every single wrinkle and every blemish. Next the victim is forced to show her yellow or rotting teeth in close up for all to see. The final kick in teeth involves the victim’s dress sense being condemned with the ferocity of a hungry shark.

If that’s not enough, just as she thinks that the savaging is complete, the now dejected contestant is paraded on a local high street like a mutated freak. Nicky demands that every single passer by gives his or her opinion on age and appearance.

Now at her lowest ebb, the victim is led back to the studio where Nicky confirms the dreaded news; the victim looks like a decrepit old geriatric and has the style and grace of an orang-utan cat-walking at a fashion show.

Nicky herself is not a bad-looking woman and boy does she rub it in. “Look at me! I’m beautiful; I dress like a model; I am an expert in all things fashionable and nutritional. You are the complete opposite!!”

Nicky isn’t totally heartless. She is here to help after all and her audience, perched on their settees, are then subjected to the remedy to cure the victim’s problems. With a smile on her pretty face Nicky tells the victim that she will have her face sliced open and vast swathes of facial skin peeled off before having major dental surgery and a thorough makeover.

I cringed throughout the entire show.

I hated the fact that the victim was paraded in public as some kind of aged mutant creature in a zoo. I hated the condescending way in which Nicky talked down to the victim, treating her like a naughty child and acting as if she herself were an omnipotent fashion guru.

And being a squeamish wimp, I couldn’t bear watching the victim being attacked by a mad cosmetic surgeon with a scalpel and marker pen.

I left at that point and returned at the end of the show.

Thankfully, the victim was transformed; her hair was sculpted by a celebrity hairdresser; her teeth were perfected by a dental surgeon; her face was peeled, sliced and every wrinkle and blemish exterminated; her wardrobe was replaced by clothes selected by style gurus to the rich and famous.

The final chapter involved Nicky once more parading the victim in the high street, this time as a youthful, dashing, gorgeous nymphette who could melt any man’s heart at one hundred paces.

It worked. The victim, no longer a victim, did indeed look like a completely different person with at least ten years surgically removed. And the audience agreed.

But, for me the whole thing was very distressing. I saw a sad old woman humiliated to within an inch of total despair only to be sliced and diced and resurrected as a youthful phoenix. I felt a wave of sorrow followed by relief - I hated it.

That’s why I question the programme and other programmes like it. Is it right to watch a person destroyed and then recreated all in the name of entertainment? What if the surgery had gone wrong? What if the makeover hadn’t worked? Do we know about the failures, if there are any?

I am so grateful that I have managed to retain my youthful looks. I am forty five years old but almost always mistaken for somebody ten years younger. Why? Well the main reason is that I do not smoke and I do not spend hours in the sun. If I expose my skin to bright sunshine for more than an hour, it turns a luminous purpley-red colour. Any longer and I get sunstroke, which means that I end up in bed ill, but unable to get comfortable because my skin has been cooked. And two days later I look like an extra from a zombie film as the fried skin peels off - I don't need cosmetic surgery to remove my facial skin.

I have no intention of ever subjecting myself to a traumatic experience such as “Ten Years Younger”. I’m there already thankfully.

See you in two weeks. I’m off to South Africa tomorrow to tell Nicky what I think of her show (if I bump into her on my travels).