Written All Over My Face

I've been receiving messages, subliminal, encoded in white noise, a
certain buzzing in the ears, a low-level electrostatic fuzz. My body's
been responding, unprompted, unaided, involuntarily like breathing,
sneezing, R.E.M. The twitching around the eyes, the throbbing by the
temples, the tingling through the limbs like the onset of flu, the
unaccountable feeling of nervousness and impatience. I've been ignoring
them at my peril, the doctor says. Something upped the ante and I got
the message, finally; I had it written all over my face.

It started as a slightly strange feeling in my upper lip, then,
gradually - over the period of one afternoon and evening - became
something more sinister: a creeping stubbornness by the right side of
my face to respond. My smile became a lop-sided grimace, raising my
eyebrows an impression of Roger Moore at his most suave. An ear
infection, I thought. A thought backed up by an ear that felt as large
as an Indian elephant's, a cauliflower ear, though it looked normal
enough. A good night's sleep and I'll be as right as rain. Right?
Wrong!

Morning brought a scream. Not an audible scream. Edvard Munch's
'Scream': another impression staring back at me through the bathroom
mirror as I yawned. I blinked. No? I winked; my right eyelid refused to
close. Lord Charles without Ray Charles' hand pulling the cord. My
repertoire of impressions was growing by the minute. I panicked. I'd
had a stroke right? 'Wrong,' the emergency doctor said, too calmly,
over the phone. Call into the surgery later, he said. Later? When
later? I can't wait till later, I might be dead, I said, through the
left side of my mouth? No you won't, he said. It's Bell's Palsy. See me
later, he said.

Later, he said 'It's viral but not unrelated to stress. Are you
stressed?' Stressed isn't a word strong enough to stress how I feel.
I'm DIStressed. 'You need to calm down, chill out,' he said. Yeah, like
that's easy to do.

Eldest daughter off to uni, son about to start his A-levels, youngest
daughter just starting out on her educational journey and I'd heard my
job was gone; had vaporised into the ether above the Square Mile like
so many others before. That's what accounts for the smog. Forget smoke
and greenhouse gases, it's a thick blanket of gloom, doom and
despondency rising from the city offices. It's palpable, you can taste
it in the air, it sticks to your clothes, hair and skin and no amount
of soaking in bio-degradables or Essence of Herbs will remove it.

I'd panicked, the thought 'You'll never work in this town again' had
echoed around my spinning head before the boss' 'I'm sorry to have to
inform you blah, blah, blah..' sentence had finished being said. I work
in a niche market and the niche just got smaller, my expertise less
popular. I'm at the age where D.O.B. on an application form is
construed as D.O.A. by the young oik that will vet it. I foresaw a long
and arduous journey up a certain creek without a certain paddle, being
sucked along in the mire towards the arsehole of eternal
joblessness.

I leave the doctor's surgery with a photocopied leaflet explaining
Bell's Palsy and a prescription for steroids that may or may not help.
The leaflet says I can expect a full recovery from anywhere between two
weeks and never. At least I haven't had a stroke.

Back at home my wife makes a joke and we both laugh. She thinks I'm
taking the piss out of someone with facial disfigurement and I have to
explain to her that I'm not, that the maniacal pirate she sees before
her is no impersonation, it really is just me and we laugh some more.
We laugh until we fold into each other's arms, crying.