The Colour Vitiligo

Vitiligo is an enigma; an enigma that won't de-enigmatise so easily, and for oh-so obvious reasons. Variegated looks and the variegated company which one may keep have always met with raised eye brows no matter what the place or the era you are in.
Vitiligo as equal opportunities' disease can afffect anybody, at any age, anywhere.
It is widely held the fear of cancer is in the fear of dying; the fear of vitiligo is in the fear of living. We humans make sure of that.
Vitiligo has no definite proven cause -a genetic basis is only one of numerous theories which keep coming and going out of fashion. And yet(armed with almost zero knowledge of the condition) at some level we all regard this to be 'l'enfant terrible' of the thousand and one diseases there are, to the point of shunning and avoiding all forms of social and or intimate contact with these individuals.

How sad is that, especially, when you stop to think how eagerly sought after is white or light skin in most Eastern societies?! Our fixation; on finely chiseled looks, that 10/10 symmetry of face and evenly toned skin as the only parameters qualifying 'Beauty', is TOTAL beyond belief that we are prepared to make easy pariahs out of anyone who fails to make the cut.
Sad but true. Spare a thought to those men and women with Vitiligo for whom we have made life simply not worth living!
(we owe this entry to the brave men and women who gave us, "Nital" - the Film. Long may your tribe flourish!).

Bend It Like Brenda

For some of life's most vexing questions, the answers can often be amazingly simple, though, by no means simplistic.
Linear programming and quadratic equations are wholly redundant to this exercise and appear left to hang out dry when it comes to the rationalizing of Euroscpetics' torrid love affair with the pound sterling or, trying to get to the bottom of why the QoE apparently doesn't need to get her own identity card before the rest of us genteel people do :) . Somehow the two questions(or answers) are inter-woven.

It's a shame my bf just back from a secondment at LSE couldn't get his supposedly adequately trained mind to think out of the box and to square the circle on this one. So just why is Great Britain ( nothing great about it anymore) recalcitrant to divorce the pound-sterling as its official currency, and why is Brenda darling none too keen on having identity cards made for the Spencers?

The answer I think lies with the establishment's penchant(by and large) to suck up to St. James's' and to go on waxing lyrical about empire and "Hail Brittania," albeit; in an obtuse manner making it the signature tune of British governance - both corporate and of the state.
For Harry Pothead's sake; this is no News of the World spoof : Brenda has known all along she can always flash a fiver (with her face on it) to the guard on duty at Bucks', as proof of identity to let her into her abode. You take away that from her and Brenda becomes us queuing for the National ID card.
Steady now, Brenda and Brian - no jumping queues!