Even in the friendliest light I've got a face like a pummelled potato.

There's not a day goes by without I wake up feeling like I've been yanked straight out of the cold, hard earth, with a fizzog that shows the results: blemished, bruised, pulled up by the roots.

It was never my intention to pass as a walking, talking tuberous lookalike, but then you have to deal with what you're given. I try to. So that's a regime of regular exercise; eating basically only foods that nurture the skin and cherish the epidermis (Guys, I'm still waiting); and deluging my innards with water. If I drink any more water than I already do, then I'm amphibious. Nevertheless it all pats down a few rough edges and smooths some of the hard surfaces; a daily bout with Body Shop's moisturiser for men does what it valiantly can as well.

But I don't help myself with my affinity for accidental self-harm. No Sir, whatever the good works of Nutrition and Fitness might do, I am busily undoing: I scar myself shaving (always a favourite. If you ever see someone on the central line with contusions and cuts on his face and neck, looking like he's had a night with a polecat, then it's me); or as this afternoon, I blindly walk into the corner of a concrete buttress, conveniently placed at exactly my head height (how did the architect know?); so for the past few hours, I've been sporting a cartoon sized bruise on my forehead that looks like a half open, blackened third eye. There is no head height wall or ceiling left in central London that I have not had intimate cranial contact with. None.

Then I get bitten. How or when, I've no idea, just that I do. And, of course, it always has to be somewhere high profile. Plenty of space to choose, but invariably they stick to the old favourites: my nose, ear, something visible. Why if I'm going to get bitten by some carnivorous invertebrate with wings cannot it not be somewhere so conspicuous. Days ago, for whatever bloodsucking reason it had, something took a chunk out of my cheek. I've been walking the streets of London since then with a blood red weal that looks like the aftermath of a nail gun attack, that only now is starting to lose it's lurid colour. Less vermilion, more glistening pink ham.

I want to have a normal face, not be part of Mount Rushmore come to life, Mr Potatohead comes to town. What's a boy to do?