I could just go into that post and edit it, but once I've published a post, it no longer belongs to me. It belongs to the world. Once your child leaves the nest, you can't start criticising its vulgar wing-strokes.
Writing a blog is like working at a lighthouse. I'm shining a light into the darkness. If that light happens to blind a cyclist, forcing her into a ravine, it's none of my concern. I'm strictly bulb-maintenance.
That face photo must be slightly lower now. But I need to keep typing to force it completely off the page.
I suppose I could just force it down with a different large picture.
There.
My face is still visible, but it's mainly hand.
That's much better. When people first meet you, they prefer to be greeted by a hand, rather than a face. That's why you always introduce yourself by displaying fingers.
That is my right hand, I think. It looks like my left hand in the picture, but that's some kind of mirror lie. My left hand is currently painted green. That's how I know.
If you stare at a picture of your own hand for long enough, you start to become concerned about your knuckles. That's something I've learned over the past eight hours.
I really am obsessed with myself. I suppose it's vanity, but I'm not really admiring myself. I'm just fixated. Does vanity imply approval?
It might just be making up for lost time, because as a child I was never allowed mirrors.
My parents refused to allow any reflective surfaces in the house. They were from a different era. They saw mirrors as newfangled brain-rotters. As far as they were concerned, reflections dulled the imagination. And who am I to say they were wrong?
They called the mirror the "idiot window". They wanted us to read books. "Anyone who feels the need to gaze at their own reflection needs to take a long, hard look at themselves," said my dad. He was a wise man.
It had its disadvantages. Of course it did. It's difficult to stick to your anti-mirror principles in the modern world.
I'd feel left out at school. Each morning, when the other kids gathered to discuss the exciting reflections they'd seen the previous evening, I stood apart; a sheepish pariah. There was a cultural disconnect that pervaded my teenage years. I had friends, but they always seemed to view me as an outsider. They knew that I didn't have access to the same influences as they did. Sometimes they'd make a joke about inverted images of themselves, and I had to pretend I knew what they were talking about.
I had never seen my tongue. They knew I hadn't. It was trying.
I tried to make up for my lack of mirror viewing by watching lots of television. But if a mirror ever appeared on the screen, my father would switch over. I've never seen the whole of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
I resented it at the time, but looking back, I can't help but admire my parents' principles. They were resolute. They even had to quit their jobs because they were spending so much time dulling spoons and throwing pebbles to disrupt the surface of water.
When I finally left home and went to university, I suddenly had access to a plethora of mirrors. I overindulged. After a reflection-binge that involved a mirror ball, a periscope and a copy of Enter the Dragon, I was encouraged to get help by my friends.
It worked, and now I can use mirrors to an appropriate degree.
But I'm still fascinated by my own face. That's why I include all of the pictures on this blog. I'm still making up for lost time, I suppose. I still think about the twelve-year-old me, with no access to mirror, and no way of knowing how much spinach I had in my teeth.
I'll never miss and tooth-spinach, or face stains, or bleeding eyes. Not now. I can just head on over to http://headscissors.blogspot.co.uk/ and make sure my face - and indeed my hand - is as clean and clear as a crystal pond: unpebbled, untarnished, reciprocal, inverted joy.
Look at me now!
I will.
My parents, incidentally, changed their tune a few years after I left. They adopted twin boys: one was a vampire, the other was not. They needed mirrors to check which was which.
They got used to a house of reflections. They joined the twenty-first century in the end. And their make-up is more symmetrical than ever.
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