Facial Mutation

I still haven’t renewed my passport. Although my MP has replied to my ranty email and has said he’ll write to the home secretary about my assertion that renewing your passport shouldn’t cost the same as a new one. I picked up the forms for my passport on Saturday and then went to get photos taken. I was relishing the chance to get rid of my old passport photo as I look like a junkie on a come down. I’m really not sure what happened but I have had to put up with it for 10 years. So I paid 4 quid, followed the bizarre rules (hair tucked behind ears, face in the oval – it didn’t fit) and then got a set of photos which show I have progressed from a junkie on a come down to …a junkie who will mug you in the street with a dirty needle. I looked at them for ages (mainly in disgust) and then convinced myself they weren’t that bad. Then met my friends for lunch and they were all reduced to speechless hysteria and then one of them said “take anything you want just don’t hurt my face” so I have decided they were unusable.

So I thought I’d lard on the make up, tie my hair back rather than have it stuffed behind my ears and have the photos retaken. I was planning to do it on Monday. Then on Sunday a small lump appeared on my forehead. I thought it was a spot so attacked it, it wouldn’t die. By Sunday evening I looked like I had been hit on the head and had one of those amusing cartoon style head bumps. Monday I came to work and my whole forehead was swollen and my lump was enormous. I went to the chemist and he said it looked like a bite so gave me some stuff to put on it. When I woke up Tuesday I was looking a bit puffy so I thought I’d slap a lot of make up on. Sadly I couldn’t locate my eyelids as they were so swollen. On closer inspection the bridge of my nose had blended in to my massively swollen forehead and I looked horrific. I cried. The mature option. And then realised that I was only crying from one eye. Which amused me for a bit and then I went to the doctors. Was put on penicillin. Spent the day hiding from the world. Woke up Wednesday to discover even bigger face, one eye swollen shut and two massive eye bags. Cried again. Went back to doctor. Now on steroids. Hid from the world.

Today is Thursday and I have some semblance of a face, I still don’t have the most defined features so I am wearing my glasses so people are able to guess where my eyes should be. Sadly I am having to wear them half way down my nose in a librarian style as the top of my nose is still quite swollen. Such is life.

Of course this is the week when the person I like asks me out for a drink. I have refused on the grounds that I would have to wear a balaclava. I may be being overly vain but I am not that attractive at the best of times, I’d rather not ruin my chances totally by having Krakatoa on my forehead. Which is so swollen it’s now a fivehead. I really hope this goes down soon. It is deeply unpleasant. I hate it.

So still no passport photos. I shall have to put it on the back burner and do it next week when I have some shape to my face. If you see me tottering around looking like Bette Davis in What Happened to Baby Jane then I am off to have the snaps taken.