I count myself lucky that I have not suffered too badly from spots. Even in my early teens when the old bodily chemistry is at its most active, I feel I got off lightly. These days, spots for me are few and far between. Occasionally one turns up to remind me just how young I am in the grand scale of things, and that’s more or less it. We’re all hypocondriacs to greater or lesser degrees, and so we often forget how lucky we are—as individuals, as a species, or as any other demographic in between.
This morning, for the first time, a spot made me laugh. They normally provoke a sort of dull annoyance, but this one was a corker. If dermatological blemishes were capable of having a sense of humour, this one and are were in tune. Why? Because, unlike other spots, it hadn’t chosen to position itself on my face or neck. That’s sooo old hat. No—this one had ripped up the rule book, gone out and found itself somewhere new. Where? On the back of my left hand. Genius. Totally unsqueezable.