The first cut is the daftest

I can't remember when it first happened. I was slumped in front of the telly, probably knitting (depending on the pattern, this can make TV like radio, only with inferior pictures). I glanced up. On screen was a Moderately Well Known Actor. I paused. I peered. I may have dropped a stitch. I turned to the Electric Landlady. "Here," I said, "has he had a nose job?"

The Electric Landlady made a cursory inspection. "Yes," she said eventually. "Think so."

"But!" I spluttered. "But! He had a perfectly good nose before."

The Electric Landlady shrugged and went back to her crossword. I gazed intently at the screen, willing them to show a close-up, and, if at all possible, a profile shot.

Since then, whenever the Moderately Well Known Actor appears, I scrutinise his nasal area. I try to judge the distance between his septum and upper lip. If the Electric Landlady is about I irritate her beyond human endurance by canvassing her opinion even though I know it hasn't changed. I am now 95% convinced he's had his profile tweaked. And this makes me wild. Not wild as in an OMG-you-sexy-moderately-well-known-actor. Wild as in what-the-hell-did-you-do-that-for-you-silly-man?

It's not just MWKA and his profile. It's not even just Very Famous Actor and his missing wrinkles. It isn't the aging actresses (all of twenty-four) being sliced and diced because no-one will employ them beyond thirty unless they're Judi Dench or Helen Mirren. It's not the identikit pop tarts writhing around MTV in their scanties. (It's not titillating because being told to strip off by a record company exec is empowering, OK?) It's you. It's me. It's all of us.

There's a secret the entertainment, cosmetic and fashion industries and all their myriad fellow travellers don't want us to know. However, fearless tweedy plain monobrowed spinster that I am, here and now I am going to blow it wide open. It is this:

You are all right as you are.

You don't need to be sexy 24/7. You don't need to be hot. You don't need to change yourself to fit in with a committee's expectations.

And if your nose is a little longer than you'd like, if your eyes disappear when you smile, don't be upset. We don't hate you for it. We may even like you more.

Just be you.

I've got a little list...

When I'm not writing clunky blog entries or procrastinating, I read. Since procrastination takes up most of my time, I read far less than I would like too and less than I should. The usual result of this is spectacular multibooking. This week I have been blending Edmund Crispin with Terry Pratchett, which is good for the vocabulary if nothing else. I haven't dared add any battlefield archaeology to the mix. One of the less mindboggling side effects of this habit is that I always have a mental list of Books I Really Must Read When I Have Time. Everyone has a list like this. It's driven entirely by guilt and peer pressure. Wolf Hall? Oh yes, but there were about three hundred people on the waiting list at the library last time I checked. All three volumes of Simon Schama's History of Britain? Gathering dust on the bookcase for the past six years or so. A Clockwork Orange? Read an extract in the paper this morning, thought "oh, that looks good, I'll have to reserve that". The complete works of Christopher Marlowe? Got to read them for work but I fear I'll struggle. (I don't buy the Marlowe-was-Shakespeare theory on the entirely unscientific grounds that Dr Faustus bored me and the Shakespeare I've read so far never has.) The Lost Symbol? No, no and thrice no. Even for a giggle. The worst aspect of this condition is that the list gets longer all the time. I'll be wading through a social history of the personal column thinking "I haven't read Jane Eyre in ages". (A sub-condition is the buying of books I've borrowed and enjoyed, the theory being that I liked them so much I'll re-read them later. They gather dust with all the others.) Why do I do it? Life is finite. There is only a fixed number of books I can read. Why must I try to cram in more than I can possibly get through in the allotted time? Denial complicates matters still further. I know I won't read six books during my week off work but I still bring them back from the library anyway. I've read one, which has brought a small glow of achievement. I'd planned to read part of another today but somehow ended up ironing instead and then realised I hadn't finished the paper. The simplest thing would be to admit that I don't have time and send the contents of my overstuffed bookcase to charity shops, relying instead purely on the charms of the local library service, but that would be a betrayal of the avid reader I used to be. There's nothing for it. I am going to have to work through all the books on my list. One at a time...