I’m sure I’m not alone in my love for squeezing spots and blackheads but I’m quite (un)fortunate in that my skin is actually quite good and that I’ve never been afflicted with acne, or even many spots. What’s frustrating is that, when I do get them, they are rubbish: just painful lumps that rarely develop into anything that can be squeezed with a satisfying pop and a trail of goo splattering up the bathroom mirror.

There’s clearly a lesson in “leave it alone” to be learned from scalp spots that take you by surprise when you scratch your head.

From experience, the most painful spots are situated:

• in the ear
• lip margin
• scalp (these have a direct line to the occipital lobe)
• chin
• that thing that separates the nostrils

Much of my time as a teenager was spent looking at the faces of my peers and marvelling at how they were so heavily pitted with so many blackheads. Just how did this happen? I suppose the greasy hair was kind of a giveaway, but my obsessive little brain wondered how those blessed with such entertaining skin could resist spending hours squeezing their faces off (or failing that, having a wash). If they had, would it have changed the actual structure of their face? I doubt I’ll ever find out.

It’d be great if cats and dogs got blackheads, the little dog has the perfect temperament for having his spots squeezed. They may not get blackheads, but cats do get abscesses. These are things that you tend not to notice until the day that you’re petting the poor thing and notice a lump, with a scab, that you can’t resist picking at… BOOM! An erupting mass with its own blood supply and nervous system oozes out from the poor beast under its own force and it just doesn’t stop. You think it’s done, go to clean the wound and it starts all over again. Amazing!

Cats and dogs
My recent thoughts of getting a cat have nothing to do with any prospect of dealing with abscesses I might add. They’re different from dogs, obviously, in that they’re… nice. I do love Rocky, but I miss having a feline companion – a tabby one, called Max, with big ears, and a limp. I guess I’m missing my old cat Max and although I know no other animal will ever come close to him, there’s no harm in trying out a few to see what they end up like. Then I think about all that fur, litter trays, smelly cat food, vets’ bills, the road, the possibility that it’ll be as psychotic as my dog, or eaten by him, and the answer is no, you’re not getting a cat.

Consideration has also been given to getting another dog, but luckily I’ve been rescued by winter and the reminder of how appalling Rocky is at walking on his lead. Having to take another out at the same time would have me abandoning them and throwing myself under a passing truck.

So it comes back down to me and him and here we are at bedtime, him snoring away, me on the point of joining him. This will do just nicely.