Two people on the train caught my attention on my way home today.

It is, of course, extremely rude to make personal remarks about people, whether one is acquainted with them or not.   However, I was very struck by what I would have to interpret as a major disparity between the image of themselves they presumably intended to display to the world, and the reality they actually achieved.  So struck, in fact, that I feel compelled to record the details here.  Not, emphatically not, in order to ridicule, but rather, in a peculiar sort of a way, to marvel.

The first traveller was a young lady.  She had provided for herself, in the current fashion, a fairly detailed makeup.  Very expertly and precisely done it was too, bearing witness to great attention to detail.  She had chosen, as seems quite fashionable at the moment, quite a deep colour of foundation.  The sort of colour one might describe, if one were purchasing it from BandQ, as "Terracotta" or perhaps, "Brick."  I confess though, that in the uncharitable mood in which I found myself, the expression that sprang at once to my mind was, "Mattesson's Crab Paste."

So to the second traveller.   This gentleman is well on the way to having a haircut like my own.  The poor soul still possesses though, a dusting of (sadly rather dark) hair on his scalp, just enough to give the uncomfortable sensation of fine pubery.  He is also cursed by that little island or tuft, front and centre of the forehead, that so often remains behind when all other cranial turf has fled.  Traditionally, these remnants would have been grown long, and expertly coiffed into that style still known, decades after its creator abandoned the style, as "a Bobby Charlton."  Modern habit wisely spurns these vanities, and opts for the simple expedient of clippers.
Our hero, however, had spurned both of these approaches.  He had opted for an application of hair-styling product.  He had also opted - remarkably, in one so thinly crested - for a centre parting.  In full-face, as he will no doubt see himself in the mirror of a morning, the effect was very acceptable.  The central tuft, suitable gelled and parted, provided a passable facsimile of a quiff-like hairline, supported by the wisps of bumfluff behind.
But alas!  A head must also be seen at other angles, and it is my sad duty to report, that from all viewing positions other than front-on, what one seemed to see was an elaborately-waxed Poirot moustache, glued to the middle of the forehead.

Hmm.  There but for the grace, etc...  and I'm much given to wonder where my own self-image parts company with the surfaces on show to the rest of humanity.
For I'm quite certain that it does.