My ‘Best Side’

My two favourite parks in London are Finsbury Park and Clissold Park. I like the former mostly because it’s on my doorstep, and the latter for the butterfly aviary which I would frequent high in summer, the deer enclosure and because it was on my doorstep last year. Somewhere between these two parks, you will find half an eyebrow and the skin from my left cheek. They are, no doubt, in a tidy pile, a bike’s-length away from the years first layer of ‘black ice’. 

I asked my doctor, Kate, if she would consider ‘evening me out’ with a weapon of her choice. She insisted the scar would be less noticeable if I let her get on with the stitches. I decided not to argue the case for symmetry while Kate had a needle in my face.

I’m now at liberty to decide if a broken cheekbone and a 3cm scar above my eye are cosmetic damage sufficient enough to change my ‘best side’ over to the one unscathed by the incident. Although I have little interest in a life perpetually chained to sitting on the left side of benches and only ever driving cars abroad, this is a decision that I am surprisingly impartial to. Having never really loved either, there’s something unfamiliar about a life in which the two halves of my face are not competing for my affection. I’ve decided that it’s time to embrace both sides with equal indifference.

“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them to be attractive company or not.”