Saturday 28th July

It is often the shy ones, like me, the ones who are actually petrified of society and who lack any semblance of self-confidence whatsoever, who come across as cool and confident.  But like all confidence tricks it is still a trick.  In fact we overcompensate and often appear feckless and stupid, which of course may not be so far from the truth.  Enough of self-deprecation, and by my mid-thirties I had had enough too.  So I stopped hating who I was and despite a recurring fear of being exposed completely naked as an interloper, a gatecrasher and a pretender, I managed to get by.  I still do not exactly love myself, but I certainly do not dislike me anymore; I suppose I am resigned to the imperfection that I am, and try to big-up the good bits and ignore the obvious flaws.  But there is a world of difference between learning to love yourself and being ‘in love with yourself’.

Doesn’t it just make you sick to see them all, the pretty girls and boys who think they are so beautiful and cool and strut around as if they are too precious to even acknowledge the existence of us lesser mortals.  In their high-heel shoes and immaculate make-up and not-a-hair out of place they are constantly sneaking an approving glance in shop windows or any reflecting surface to get just another look at the one they truly love.  And the guys, who are so obviously ‘guys’, ‘hunks’, and generally all-round gorgeous chaps, who walk with such a confident swagger and bark into their mobiles and guffaw along with the rest of the good old boys in the pub, and have great jobs and a steady girlfriend who is also one of the gorgeous ones too; how lucky, how smart, how cool they are.  But underneath this superficial gloss, do they never question themselves, are they ever unsure, or are they simply blinded by the light of their own brilliance.  Learn to love yourself and you stand a chance of loving others; in love with yourself there is no room for others