My Non-Designer Genes

There are very few Guardian readers in my village. The newsagent stocks hundreds of copies of the tabloids but rarely more than half a dozen Guardians.
I almost never see a fellow Guardian reader. They either get up very late or buy them covertly for fear of being attacked by a gang of Daily Mail readers.
But this afternoon I saw a middle-aged man buying the Guardian.
He had a beard and was wearing sandals. His hair was slightly too long for a man of his age.
I think he caught me staring at him but I could hardly explain that I was looking for fragments of organic muesli in his beard.

I haven't worn sandals since I was six. I never eat muesli. And I don't have a beard. I should probably not be allowed to buy the Guardian.

There's little chance of me growing a beard since, as I once described here, when I briefly grew a moustache it was ginger. So with a beard I would look like George Bernard Shaw.
It's very odd because neither the hair on my head nor any of my body hair is ginger. I must have an aberrant ginger gene which has targeted my facial follicles but couldn't be arsed with the head, chest, pits or pubes.
My gay gene is incensed by this disregard for colour co-ordination.
(No, actually it isn't. I played the stereotype card purely for comic effect).
I blame my mother, for she was a ranga*. Her Mick Hucknall impressions were amazing. (I made that up. The 30 degree temperature is affecting my customary veracity).

It doesn't end there. My eyes are different colours. Not so different as to attract attention on the street. But noticeable when you get up close and personal. I wish had a pound for every pre- or post-coital conversation that has included the phrase "Did you know your eyes are different colours?"
To which the only reply is: "No, all the mirrors in the house got smashed when I was a child. That's why I've had 35 years of bad luck in meeting twats like you."

One short-lived boyfriend ( I don't mean he died. So far as I know the bastard's still alive) went even further and said I had "mad eyes".
"That's a bit rich coming from a psycho like you", I replied. That wasn't a relationship that was written in the stars.

Since some of you may now glance at the photo on this blog, I have to admit that he had a point. Indeed, when I first published that picture I almost got myself voluntarily sectioned before I ran amok with a chainsaw.

All of which leads me to conclude that a gay gene is the least of my worries. I'm a walking genetic disaster area. The mis-matched hair colours, the different coloured eyes, the unusually large (no, I won't go there)..........a few hundred years ago I would have been burned at the stake.
'Intelligent Design'? Don't make me laugh.

*ranga: a person with red hair. Much used in Summer Heights High.