Small World

Small World Why do my eyes look like nipples?

The recruitment-agency ‘angel’ offered me a job as a bank supervisor – as long as my body behaved itself jem clarke

Jem Clarke is in his very, very early fifties, is five foot zero inches tall and has never left the family home in Cleethorpes, which he still shares with his parents…

‘It’s a shame there’s not a nicer word for nipples,’ my Great-Aunt Jessie once told me.

Jessie was known widely as ‘the donkey lady’. As a robust but very small teenager living a street away from the beach, I was often called on by her to road-test a troublesome donkey before she could designate it tourist-friendly. If I left only partially bitten (‘Gum, no teeth,’ said Great-Aunt Jessie), then the donkey would soon have the offspring of every coal miner east of Mexborough on its back for the summer season.

We had a cousin, Jinny, who was also known widely as ‘the donkey lady’ on account of her face. The 1970s could be both confusing and cruel.

Whereas Jessie may not have been the best at domesticating donkeys, she was spot-on about the sometimes blunt descriptions of the human body: words that sound ‘slangy’ but are in fact the proper medical word. I can remember my recent shock when, in the X-ray room, a radiologist ordered me to put on a cricketer’s box to protect my ‘gonads’. I unconsciously pulled a contorted Kenneth Williams face of disgust at the coarseness of language. But, lo and behold, gonad turned out to be the correct medical term.

The one great thing about being ‘jobless, hopeless and shiftless’ (© my mother) was that it gave me an excuse to buy a new laptop/netbook/computer light enough to just about carry. Since Microsoft Millennium Edition (my previous go-to system), things have moved on apace and my new laptop is all very Logan’s Run. The most fascinating and futuristic feature is facial-recognition software. Like a cyber-pet, this cute computer knows who I am and unlocks its screen on sight of my ‘extremely unique face’ (© my father).

When the weather recently turned clammy, I vacated my job-searching HQ (the boxroom) for a mid-morning strip wash. As I re-entered shirtless, I suddenly saw the computer screen unlock itself, before it had even seen my face. I relocked the computer, backed out of the room, re-entered again and confirmed that the computer was unlocking the minute it had sight of my chest area. The computer was confusing my two nipples and my navel for my face.

As it would be for a single man of any age, it’s distressing to know that the greatest computer-programming minds have determined that the most accurate physical description of me on any future dating website should be ‘nipple-eyed and navel-mouthed’.

For certainty, I got the computer to take another facial-recognition photo, which it would use to identify me, but this time I wore a pair of reading glasses. Then, shirt off, I wandered back into the room. No matter how often I offered the computer a full view of my bare chest, it remained stubbornly locked.

In the final part of my experiment, I took out a black marker pen (permanent, as it transpired), drew a very convincing pair of spectacles around my nipples and re-entered. Immediately the computer opened, on sight of my bare but now bespectacled chest.

Before I could reflect on this, I had to whizz out to meet my recruitment-agency ‘angel’, Lacey, who was coming all the way from the distant city of Hull to get me on her books.

She had specifically come for a face-to-face so she could see my official certificates and police check for working with minors etc. I’d photographed all these documents and put them onto my new laptop, which I casually but smugly held under my arm with the same pride with which come City sorts carry flat-faced dogs.

After a brief chat, Lacey assured me she could get me in work, within the day. To seal the deal, she asked that I present her with pictures of all my certificates. I opened the computer and presented my face – but it stubbornly stared back at me, refusing to unlock. Suddenly, with horror, I remembered I had changed the photo identifier to one where I was wearing specs, when, as a bachelor of this and every parish, outside my parents’ house I’m a full-time contact-lens-wearer.

Lacey had come a long way. She batted her strangely long and fake eyelashes impatiently, the increasing whiplash beat sounding like the approach of an avian predator’s wings. ‘Look – you get work, I get paid,’ she said. ‘So it’s extremely important that you show me your police-check documents, live, while we’re both present. Otherwise, the other 45 applicants for this role will beat us to it, and then it’s wasted both our times. Can’t you find some way to unlock it?’

Suddenly, I had an idea. I think there may be a small part of the brain that discerns whether an idea is good or bad. I don’t think I’ve got that bit.

Minutes later, as a kindly janitor provided Lacey with a reviving glass of water, I tried to explain that, on my recent ‘comprehensive interview skills’ course, in the INTERVIEW DON’Ts section there was no specific entry reading, ‘DO NOT strip to the waist and present your spectacled chest area to a nearby IT peripheral.’

In stranger-than-true-life fashion, Lacey was just happy to see my credentials on screen. Perhaps bonusdriven more than shamed by my body, she got me the job – covering for a bank supervisor.

Just when I thought I was going to have to go back to donkey-baiting.