The vast majority of schoolchildren have rudimentary enlightenment into all things birds and bees in what used to be called sex education classes. Starting early on in secondary school (in my day at least), the gentle introduction covers how our bodies change during a magical time in our lives called puberty; girls get periods about every 28 days and some girls stop having periods at the age of 14 when they become professional mothers. I think some classes now do things with condoms and bananas, but back in the early eighties, we were terrified into not having any sex by the government AIDS campaign.

We didn’t have gays back then, just Larry Grayson and Liberace, so we didn’t need to be told about that sort of thing, which only happened after some lesbians invaded the 6 O’Clock news and sat on Sue Lawley.

So essentially, we were told about breasts, periods, sperm, the biology of reproduction and certain aspects of secondary sexual characteristics such as hairy foo-fahs and armpits, oh and sweat and the needs for having a bath and using antiperspirant.

If I was responsible for sex education classes, I’d tell it to them straight: learn to masturbate from an early age because when all else fails, you can always rely on yourself.

The girls would also know from an early age about something terrible that creeps up on them from their late twenties: facial hair. Nobody tells you about this stuff, it’s just there one day. Of course, eyebrows and things are always there, and basic lessons in plucking would be included in the syllabus, but forewarned is forearmed when it comes to beards and moustaches.

The subject would be tackled on a number of lessons, based on need:

1. Bleaching
Sometimes acceptable, but with excessive growth, you need to be careful not to end up looking like Pai Mei.

2. Plucking vs waxing
When my moustache started to become noticeable, there were just the odd couple of darker, thicker hairs that grew at the periphery of my mouth. These could be dealt with quickly and relatively painlessly with a good pair of tweezers (spare no expense here, go for Tweezerman every time). As the years have passed, however, I need to bring out the big guns and wax the whole bloody lot off. This leaves the top lip red, numb and swollen for a number of hours afterwards, so do it when you know you won’t need to leave the house. There may be blood.

Now I’m in my forties, I notice myself checking my chin regularly throughout the day for signs of bristles, running my finger over my chin in a manner akin to a pondering philosopher. There’s also the accompanying face, whereby I stick my chin out slightly and most probably push out my bottom lip with my tongue.

My moustache gets the imaginary Dali treatment.

The problem with facial hair at my age is that I’m now too long sighted to be able to see them, so plucking them requires some sort of Ninja mind trick and a few hopeful stabs with the tweezers.

Of course, my little niece is so blessed to have me has her auntie and life mentor. I will teach her things that nobody else dare mention. She’s an absolute beauty and she’ll grow up to be a stunning young woman, but I’m already eyeing up her eyebrows, waiting for the day when I can give her her first pair of Tweezermans.

Best auntie in the WORLD!

In readiness for the party that I’m attending on Saturday, I have been working slavishly on getting a suitable ensemble together. I’m sure all the attendees at the event will be able to tell at an instant that spent all of thirty seconds on Amazon sourcing my outfit, then another two at Asda identifying suitable undergarments.

When somebody invites you to a fancy dress party in your forties, you might be mistaken in thinking that your options are limited. No pirates, spacemen or red indians at my age, Nazis are a complete no-no, but what better accompaniment to Nazis than their good Catholic friends the priests and the nuns? I’m going as a Nazi nun!

My outfit arrived at the weekend and it shows all the quality of its £10 pricetag. Made of pure nylon, it carries enough static to wipe out any sensitive electronic device and will melt in a ball of flames should it go within two metres of a naked flame. I will of course be embellishing my outfit with finest of authentic rosary beads, bought from the shop at the top of St Peter’s in Rome, don’t you know. I will look very much the part if I can keep my wimple in place… and if I avoid naked flames.

I’ll be wearing “jeggings” beneath my habit. I’d almost gone as far as buying leggings on my visit to Asda earlier, but that scenario was just too ironic, what with just about all the female shoppers in there wearing them as they ate their chips while stuffing their trolleys full of lambrini and frozen ready meals.

Pleased to make your acquaintance, whoever you are
For the past week or so, I’ve been engaged in an e-mail exchange with a woman who contacted me through one of those introductions websites. I don’t know what her proper name is, I haven’t seen a photo of her, she sort of does a similar job to me and even worked in my faculty at one point. All I know now is that she’s based in Yorkshire and that she dislikes the notion of “lesbians”, i.e. women who put their sexuality first and foremost, as much as I do.

A few months ago, I mentioned that, if I ever dated again, I’d like it to be with essentially myself. Errrm…

I doubt this will go as far as dating. We might meet and that will probably be it for a number of reasons – one being that I don’t know her name and another being that I’ve no idea what she looks like. She also confessed today that she’s the sort who eats things in supermarkets before paying for them, well, I’m sorry, but no, just no.

Still it’s always nice to encounter somebody new I suppose, so long as it doesn’t involve expending too much energy and I don’t have to let them into my house to mess it up.

In other news
In other news, Heinz soups have gone up at Asda. They’re now 4 for £3 instead of 50p each.

In other other news, it was such a beautiful day today. The sun shone in a cloudless sky, the day was crisp and fresh and full of promise that spring isn’t far away.

It almost put me in the mood to grab my guitar and run up a hillside and sing my lungs out. I imagine that if I ran up a hillside in my current state of fitness that I’d throw my lungs out, quickly followed by my guts and eyeballs.

I arrived at the gathering with a sense of trepidation. It was 4pm and they were moving on to a different pub. Approaching the bar, I looked at the drinks options: Illy coffee; no soft drinks on tap; a confusing selection of bottled beers that overwhelmed me. Bottle of diet coke, an espresso and, oh fuck it, a Duvel, please.

So it began, late afternoon drinking. The warmth entered my blood quickly and soon started to numb my senses, a most delightful sensation tinged with naughtiness that only comes about from drinking before eating an evening meal. Sticking to beer though, it was quite easy to moderate the alcohol intake so that I just became sleepy and pleasantly drunk, so much so that I felt able to round off the night with a couple of G&Ts without running the risk of it coming back to bite my arse today.

I don’t know what’s happened to me, but I’m liking this new found moderation that’s appeared out of the blue.

Go me!

Islands in the stream
During the course of the evening, my brother kept me updated with what the little dog was up to. “He won’t touch his food”, “He’s scared of the cat”, “He’s not had a poopy”, “He’s not eating, is he OK?” That’s just the way he is.

Having a dog that’s not particularly motivated by food makes for a little dog that’s very difficult to train. I remember trying to teach him recall, with a piece of cheddar or hot dog sausages: nothing. Always sniffing at things that were more interesting to him than me holding a piece of cheese. “Mummy, I get to see you every day and you give me cheese at home, this is a BRAND NEW smell, it’s amazing.” Eventually, I brought out the big guns and he finally submitted to braised lambs hearts. With the additional aid of a whistle, these got him to come running to me, grab a piece of offal, then scarper again. Now when he comes running to me, he stops just out of my reach to have a sniff, always watching how close I am to him, ready to run off if he’s not quite ready to go back onto his lead. No amount of braised offal can compete with a distant dog though, I just have to leave him to it and hope that the dog and its human companions don’t get too pissed off with him.

He frustrates me, annoys me, defies me, embarrasses me, but I think he kind of loves me. I miss him terribly when we’re apart for a while, he pines for me when I leave him for the shortest amount of time. And this is one of my best weapons: his separation anxiety. Those few words “See you then, BYE!” have him come running from any distance. Cruel mummy.

Humans come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours.

It’s generally accepted that we wear clothes for reasons of decency and protection from the elements, but also to convey a willingness to fit in with our fellows from whichever society we belong to, while affording a means to stand out from the crowd.

We style our hair to give ourselves a contemporary look, or for purely practical reasons, or in my case, in any way that gives it a modicum of control.

Women (generally women) use makeup to enhance the best of their facial features and to cover up blemishes that they’d rather go unnoticed. We’re always striving to find the next miracle face cream that will reverse, delay or cover up the signs of ageing.

Medical instruments intended to correct visual impairments have also become fashion items, allowing the spectacle wearer to almost be recognised from the style of their glasses more than anything else.

We cover ourselves in a veneer.

Sometimes this a finely polished and complementary outer layer that enhances who an individual is, that gives off clues as to the real person within: a thoughtful person who cares enough about themselves to make the best of their features without being showy.

In other cases, the veneer is a little bit dull and scratched, but it’s still perfectly serviceable and clean, it just needs a bit of a spruce up. It’s a protective layer that’s there to do the basics and look after what really matters underneath.

Some people come without a finish too, they use their outward appearance to display everything about themselves, their personality and emotional makeup. There’s probably nothing wrong with this, but we all need to have some degree of protection from what the world throws at us.

Then there’s the plastic coating on MDF. All very shiny and coming in a variety of styles, finishes and colours, but underneath, instead of solid oak, there’s nothing but hollow bits of chewed up fibreboard, with false nails and Ugg boots.

Death of an administrator
I thought I was slipping into a coma this afternoon at work. A typo there would have had me slipping into a comma. I bet even Lewis Carroll couldn’t have come up with that one.

Tina stared at the page. The black shapes merged and swirled and danced before her tiring eyes. As the blackness engulfed her vision from its periphery, it focused into a small white dot, the centre of which held a single inverted black teardrop. It grew within its bubble, forcing it to expand back out to the edges of the page, obliterating all the other characters in its path. With its increased size, detail became visible in the blackness: its surface was a sea of activity, differentiating into discrete, embryonic features. Eyes, nose, mouth. Angry eyes, flared nostrils, snarling mouth… TINA, WHERE ARE MY COSTINGS????

I did feel myself going at one point – not into a coma, obviously – that kind of mellow tide of extreme sleepiness that comes after taking cocodamol. Lovely at home, terrible at work. Unless you work for Google where they encourage their staff to take a quick nap to refresh themselves.

Maybe I should do something to my veneer in terms of painting open eyes on my eyelids.

The fresh air was probably a major contributory factor, perhaps aided by a few glasses of Shiraz, but last night’s/this morning’s sleep was peppered with moments of dreams, all of which would have brought feelings of anguish and loss, had they occurred in real life.

Firstly there was losing my iPad in a bet with a good friend. Disbelief at the bet being cashed was met with horror at his dismissal of the device: “This is shit compared to my Galaxy Tab.” How DARE he! I pondered ways of finding a replacement.

Moving on swiftly, I had to give a talk to my old research group, only it was one the new research groups that I now work with as an administrator. Something to do with thyroxine isoforms, comparison to hCG, other work on the glycoforms of FSH and LH, how they change in quantity and quality in various physiological states and pathologies (find out just how on Pubmed). How I couldn’t care less about any of it and was thankful of the open-air presentation in Swinton’s Fountain Square was interrupted by a load of football fans and then a load of playful dogs. I had a discussion about the best methods of clearing away dog poo.

And there was Clive, poor, trusty Clive the weeping fig. I’d taken him along to my presentation, but he met his demise there. You can’t mend a weeping fig with sellotape.

Even thought it was only 9am, I was glad to wake up. My iPad is still with me, Clive is still intact, and I can go through the rest of my life safe in the knowledge that I’ll never have to explain chromatofocusing or lectin chromatography to anyone ever again.