You might want to put those crisps down...

So at 9.15 this morning I was sitting in the waiting area of the Phototherapy department at the local hospital, watching with horror as the nurse gave the UVA-protective goggles a cursory wipe with a cloth. I may have a skin condition myself but believe me, that doesn't mean I want to have something previously worn by a man so flaky that it seemed unlikely he would even exist by the time he'd shrugged himself back into his smelly anorak and velcroed his (and I'm quoting the nurse here) "weepy" feet back into his sandals, next to my face. The choice was not mine, however, and twenty minutes later I was chanting my mantra ("new Faith shoes, new Faith shoes, new Faith shoes") to myself while breathing through my mouth and resolutely not thinking about scabs. I'd like to say at this point that nobody is to feel guilty for an involuntary "euurgh" at the mention of a skin condition. I know how you feel. It ain't pretty, and it's not something anyone likes to see. Well, try sitting in the waiting room of a Dermatology clinic as pictures of scabs, sores and scales loom over you and pale, fidgety people deposit gentle drifts of skin over themselves, the furniture and anything within a metre radius. I've had moderate (by that I mean I'm not actually so bad as to have you averting your eyes while speaking to me) problems with my hands for about twenty years now and I've heard it all. People asking if I've been burned, if it's contagious, people visibly wincing. I can't actually quite believe I'm posting this, even though most of you are relative strangers, as I'm so used to not talking about it. When shopping, I habitually pay for purchases with plastic as, even as I'm sympathising as I know how they must feel, I'm tired of shop assistants looking uncomfortable as they deposit change into my hand. I'm struggling with how to verbalise how tiring and embarrassing it is living with a visible problem like this, and even as I'm typing I'm remembering the exhausted, weeping paraplegic girl I watched crossing the Nicaraguan jungle in a wheelchair on BBC2 last night and marvelling at my capacity for self-pity. When people get to know me it becomes easier and I'm indebted to the Other Half for his patience and his ability to restrain cries of "uurgh, don't put those near that" in, ahem, intimate situations. He's encouraged me to seek further professional help and I'm finally at the stage where I can hope for remission or, at the very outer edge of hope, permanent respite.

Oh bugger, I got all carried away then and forgot the point of the story, which was this:

While I was dreading the scab/goggle thing, a not-unattractive young man came in for his treatment. The nurses weren't quite ready, so he popped into the loo. The loo that was separated from the waiting area by a single door. The proximity to his fellow flakers didn't, however, diminish his apparent urgency and within minutes of his heading cheerfully off down the corridor toward the light-units the rest of us were coughing slightly and pretending not to notice the smell of somebody else's insides.

In light of that whole post I'd like to apologise to anyone who may have been eating. I bet you'd given up by about the third sentence.

Right, now I've alienated you all, I'll be off.