14 January 2016
Shades of Back and White
By Chin Chin
God introduces light in verse 3 of the first chapter of the book of Genesis and, after that, he separates it from darkness, thus splitting night from day. In our bathroom we make the division in a different way because there is a light at each end of the room and one of them is out of order. That means that as you look in the mirror one side of your face is fully illuminated and the other is in dark shadow. To those who are familiar with astronomy there will be nothing surprising about this. Indeed the earth itself has been subject to something similar ever since it began to rotate about the sun. The earth, however, does not have to wash and shave itself.
If you have read “King Solomon’s Mines” (and, if you haven’t, you should do so. It is a ripping yarn par excellence) you will recall that one of the heroes, Captain John Good, meets the Kukuana tribe before he has finished shaving and that their respect for him is in part based on his half-shaven face. The same effect, without the advantage, can be achieved by shaving in our bathroom. You do the side nearest to the light first and achieve the smooth finish promised in razor advertisements. So far, so good, now for the other side. That 
unfortunately is in the dark but, never mind, you didn’t go to university for nothing and the obvious answer is to turn round. Now the hairy side is perfectly lit but unfortunately the mirror and the basin are behind you. That is not a perfect state of affairs either so you pick up a pad and pencil to try to work out how to get the light on the correct side and to look into the mirror at the same time.
In the end there are two obvious solutions. The first is to stand on your hands on the edge of the basin. That doesn’t actually move the light from one side of your face to the other but it does move your face to behind you, so to speak. By both turning round and doing a handstand, you can look into the mirror upside down and have the unshaved side closer to the light at the same time. The trouble is that once you have got into this position it is difficult to shave. There may be those who can stand on one hand and shave upside down at the same time but I think they are probably a minority. Certainly when I tried it, it didn’t work well but that may just be because the basin was less well attached to the wall than I had originally thought.
The second possibility is to sit on a stool and rock your head back over the basin in much the way that you do in a barber’s chair. Except that is necessary to go further, of course, if you are to see your upside down face in the mirror. This requires the sort of flexibility which disappears at about 12 years old, a pity as one is unlikely to want to shave below that age… In the end the best answer seems to be to follow Captain Good’s example and go about with one side of your face shaved and the other side not. If you are Royalty you may set a new fashion. If you are not it is probably better to stay indoors.
Actually it isn’t just shaving which is difficult in a badly-lit room. It is easy to make mistakes. I remember my father telling me of a wedding reception he went to where the guests queued up in an ill-lit corridor waiting to be greeted by the bride and groom. A number of guests had come from abroad and manners dictated that they should be greeted at some length. As a result the queue moved very slowly. My father was very hungry and it looked as if it would be some time before he got anything to eat. Fortunately, however, there was a table in a dark corner opposite and on the table there was a bowl of nuts. He asked the man behind him to keep his place in the queue and darted across, scooping up a handful of nuts and putting them into his mouth. It was an unpleasant moment when he realised that he had made a mistake and they were in fact not nuts but spat-out olive stones. It quite spoils a reception when every time you are introduced to someone you find yourself thinking: “I do hope there wasn’t one of yours in there”.
Now I don’t generally eat nuts in the bathroom but I do brush my teeth there and unfortunately the toothpaste tube is exactly the same size and shape as the tube which contains ointment for treating blisters. Discovering that you have rubbed toothpaste into your foot is not a particularly pleasant experience and it is hard to say whether cleaning your teeth with blister cream would be worse. They say that you should try to experience everything once in your life but, whether through laziness or lack of initiative, perhaps I’ll try to give that one a miss.
