Could elborate on the last bit, but i've run out of time, hope you like it!

I was watching something on TV today, and at one point someone showed a couple of scars they had on their wrist. It got me thinking about something I read in Ben Elton's novel, Past Mortem.

It's essentially about a series of murders, the victims of which were killed in the way they used to bully people at school. One such method of killing [unusual in that the victim was a young girl, whereas all the others where adults who had left school], was to tie the bully to her bedroom stool, and slit her wrists. But the wrists were not slit in the usual horizontal look-at-me-i'm-slitting-my-wrists-but-not-actually-tyring-to-die way, because slitting your wrists like that would be a very slow death. The girl's arms had been cut from wrist to elbow, and deep, perforating the strong elastic muscle layer surrounding the radial vein, and opening the vein instead [if you've ever put your had through a window, and seen teh blood spurting out of your arm in a most unexpected way, that's what happens when the radial vein is cut].

As these images were brought to my mind I remember thinking; "that's not right." And it's not. But I didn't mean it in the sense that people aren't usually meant to bleed all over the walls of their bedrooms. The idea of seeing your own skin, lacerated and cut to ribbons, with blood pouring out all over the place, is almost impossible to imagine - less still pain that comes with it. Skin is one of the things we rely on the most in life, it protects us from infection and disease, keeps us waterproof, and generally looks out for us. It's our very own living security blanket.
 

We feel it - we feel each other's - and we feel safe. It can be warm and comforting to the touch, equally it can be cold, or clammy or sweaty or hairy. Indeed, hair [one of my personal safeguards] comes from it, although sometimes it's not alwasy welcome, we need it for a reason. It can also be a pain in the arse, what with spots and insect bites and wrinkles and eczema and cancer and STIs and reactions to things.

There's scars too, but I quite like those, they are a perfect example of the favours skin does for us in the long term; it regrows itself so we don't have to replace it with nasty unnatural stuff like silver-coated elastoplast [what IS that all about?].

As I once remember saying to a friend of mine:

"I like skin; it keeps the insides in"

and that's another thing we have to thank it for.

Skin in the metaphorical sense in another thing all together. It can mean an identity, or a camoflage, maybe a smothering layer we can't wait to get rid of.

Either way, we all need one, and I think it's a remarkable thing.