In Praise Of The Fish-Bellied

As a Registered White Person Of Severely Anglo-Saxon Heritage, I have a very pale skin.  When newly born, my hair was actually white-blonde, but later darkened to ash-blonde and then tawny-blonde in my twenties and thirties (and thence to gray, but we all know about that part).  My eyes:  blue.  My skin has remained stubbornly pale — suntanning, in my case, is actually a brief period of ow-ow-ow burn red, followed by (if I’m lucky) a couple days of sorta-tanned, and then it reverts to its habitual color of white.

That’s me;  but what it means is that as a paleface, I have no problem with light-complexioned women — in fact, in most cases I find pale white skin unbearably sexy.  The old (Victorian?) attitude of “pale skin means ladylike, dark skin means farm worker” must somehow have wormed itself into my psyche — I have no idea if this is even possible, but who cares? — because my belle idéal  has always been a pale, even fish-belly-white skin.

Hence of course my adoration of redheads.  Here’s Julianne Moore, for example:

 

(I know she’s an insufferable liberal twerp, but I don’t want to talk politics to her;  my discussions would preferably be more of a Ugandan nature.)

All this came to me when I read this little piece:

Angela Scanlon has revealed that while she’s embraced her glitzy Strictly [Come Dancing] makeover, there’s one show tradition that she won’t be adhering to. The presenter, 39, has revealed she’s drawn the line at having a spray tan during her time on the show after refusing to cover her naturally pale skin.

Angela, who is partnered with pro dancer Carlos Gu, previously admitted it’s taken her 15 years to accept her complexion, sharing the insight during an appearance on Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel, where her specialist subject was redheads.

Young Angela has featured on these pages before, so Loyal Readers will know of whom I speak.  Here’s a reminder, for the forgetful / ignorant ones among you:

…and here she is in the aforementioned show:

And for those interested in such things, here are her legs, without fake tan:

I think I may need another Breakfast Gin.  Or a cold shower.

Touring Option

I was never a big fan of the 70s-era Maserati Ghibli, simply because at the time I was enthralled (and still am) by the much-smaller Dino 246 GT.

However:  times have moved on and changed, and so have I, a little bit here and there.  Now, the thrills of blatting away in a Dino at full throttle from light to light with a skinny blonde in the passenger seat have dimmed somewhat.

Now, what I think I would like is a bigger car, to accommodate the bigger Kim, and someone more akin to, say, Kelly Brook alongside me.


Rapid acceleration is okay, but not essential;  more important to me are things like sufficient torque and raw power that can push over hills and such towards my final destination.  Ditto the car.

Hence my interest in the Ghibli:  to wit, “a 4.7-liter, dry-sump V-8 that produces 330 horsepower, which is sufficient to move the big GT from zero to 60 MPH in a quick 6.4 seconds and reach a top speed of more than 150 mph.”

I know that a lot of today’s cars could do the same or better, with greater reliability and even better performance.  But what the hell:  I’m not a F1 driver, I’m not even a fast driver;  what I want is a reasonable facsimile of today’s performance, with a touch of history thrown in.

And with the top down (car and/or passenger), the thrill would be immense:

“Okay Kim, that’s enough, we get your point.”