Day Two Situation Report.
FAILs: at least 14.
If I’m honest, I stopped counting. Not a good not-looking day, not good at all. A day of fails and a day of disgruntling realisation.
FAIL #1 happened 25 minutes after leaving home. Twenty minutes of that time I was riding my scooter. Obviously I was looking, but it’s a completely different kind of looking. Gawpface-lechmonger-looking and scooter-rider-looking are – and forever will remain – mutually exclusive activities. I like my innards where they are, not doused liberally across the tarmac of Elephant & Castle’s double roundabout hell.
That'll take more than a little Vanish
Today, as yesterday, I was caught out by an early Rule-1-breaching eye contact sesh, this time with a bloke who wasn’t even worth the ocular muscle movement. I marched on fail-free until lunchtime, aided and abetted by the barren man-wasteland that is my workplace. Then one little meerkat slipped out of the burrow as I went to fetch a sarnie. FAIL #2.
FAIL #3 occurred at the gym, potentially dangerous ground for rule-abiding citizens of Notlookingshire. Or it would be if my gym wasn’t in a very gay part of town and packed to the gunwales with hot, toned, well-dressed, good-smelling men with absolutely no interest in my lil’ piece of straight-girl ass. But it seems, even then, I can’t help myself. So yeah, FAIL 3: meerkatting gay guys. Way to go, girlfriend (finger shake, head waggle).
The remaining nine – nine, for fanny’s sake – were yet more breaches of Rules 1 and 4. I am absolutely, positively no good at this game. But the thing is, most of the blokes I’m looking at don’t even warrant my attention. I mean, I’m no Kelly Reilly (little known but she’d turn me) but I’m no Lorraine Kelly either.
I’ve realised it’s not that I’m looking, and failing, out of intrigue; I’m doing it purely out of habit. Male outlines are to me what bells were to Pavlov’s dogs, except when a man comes into view I look him up and down, not dribble everywhere. But then, there is no cause to dribble – most of the men I look at, and fail for, are only ringing bells with Quasimodo.
DING! DONG!
But there’s something these gym-buffed gay boys and ugly-stick-hit straight men have in common – they both raise the question: are all forms of looking unacceptable? That is, does anything fall outside the boundaries of looking? Or, what are the exceptions to the Rules? Alternatively, can I cheat?
It’s an important question; one that requires consideration, consultation and possibly a public inquiry. Your local authority will get back to you.
The year of not looking 
