fascinated by noses

I am writing a handsome hero at the moment and I doubt he is going survive unscathed.  My heroine warns her family not to kill him until she has had his portrait painted, which pretty much means he is doomed to get some kind of damage.  Think how much more interesting he’ll look.  It won’t hurt much. 

I have always been fascinated by noses.  One snowy day in England, my father walked near a neighbour who was shovelling snow.  My father was minding his own business, intent on taking the dog out for a run on the moor.  He got whacked in the face by her shovel.  Blood everywhere!  She took him to his house, probably not wanting to get blood on her floor.

My mother returned home a short time later to find them in the kitchen still trying to staunch the blood.  “It’s awful,” cried the neighbour.  “Look at his nose!  It’s all my fault!  It looks dreadful!  I think you should take him to the hospital!”

My mother gave my father’s nose a good stare.  “Hmm,” she said, “it always looks like that.”

It was true my father had a long nose with a bump on it.  I don’t think he quite looked like the Duke of Wellington sideways.  Not everyone is blessed with a honker recognizable half a mile away across a smoky battlefield.  But he must have been close.

I couldn’t resist giving my first hero a family curse kind of nose.  Not a nose to love at first sight.  I even gave him a heroine who was used to the nose, even if she didn’t admire it.  She hated him for all sorts of other reasons.  I won’t tell you about the time he accidentally threw her in the lake, or as she tells it, how he tried to drown her.  Because that would bring up my water fetish, and I think I’ll save my confession for another post.