Up until last week fantasies about John Key shaving were not on my list of things to do in my spare time.
His cuddly-wuddliness may be alluring to those who appreciate there may be no envy-provoking washboard abs concealed beneath his nicely ironed shirts.
His legs remain an unknown quantity, too, although, endearingly, he seems to share my difficulty for consistently propelling them in the right direction (no pun intended).
Despite such mystery, imagining his chest, legs and the rest of him in the early morning bathroom never occurred to me.
Now Anthony Hubbard of the Sunday Star-Times has got me started, it is hard to know where to stop.
Lest any of you fall into the trap of believing I am among those seedy women of a certain age driven to tasteless thoughts of famous men to make the dubious qualities of the men in their lives more appealing, let me assure you in my thoughts John only features from the waist up.
He is either ensconced in what the poncy would call a bath sheet, but to the rest of us is a towel, or a similarly thick and luxuriant robe. (The possibility of pyjamas was not something I wished to explore.)
In my image, the edge of his shaving mirror is studded with lights like something in a leading man's dressing room.
If he was tempted to shave with his sunglasses on, it could be forgiven and not seen as an attempt to look cool.
It's a toss-up whether his razor would be the cheapest throw-away sort some minion has bought for him at the supermarket or something heavy and gold with the ostentatious manufacturer's mark suitably displayed. I lean towards the latter.
There will be some sort of exquisite shaving soap or foam, a cut far above Old Spice; something leaving the merest trace of masculine scent.
As he lathers and shaves, I do not want him conversing with his alter-ego the Minister of Tourism about the national cycleway, as Mr Hubbard reported.
It's not that I mind him talking to himself. Heck, you should hear me when I'm shaving my legs, particularly when the scene goes from sloughing to slaughter.
I want him to be using that shaving time wisely. For his own betterment.
Just like those who attended the jobs summit would like us to give up a day's work a fortnight for training purposes.
Were those people, mostly men, suffering from boozy lunch syndrome when, after a few drinks, every idea is a beaut if only you can stay awake long enough to tell people? What we are to be trained in is uncertain.
Learning how to do our jobs better than we already do even though those jobs are under threat in the economic crisis seems futile.
If it is training involving something else, are employers really going to be enthusiastic about contributing to that?
Talking to himself about the national cycleway probably makes John feel good though, a bit like him saying yes to a Maori sovereignty flag flying over Parliament and the Auckland Harbour Bridge on Waitangi Day next year if iwi can agree on which one and can explain its meaning.
If he was really supportive of the idea he could have told iwi to fly as many flags as they liked this year without explanation.
The cycleway is a similar diversionary tactic.
How is agreement going to be reached on where it will go? No tin-pot town in the country will want to miss out.
And will cyclists truly be that thrilled? Wouldn't those free spirits rather choose their own routes?
What could be worse than following the path of a whole lot of lycra-clad try-hards who would insist on regaling you with stories of their sore bum remedies and how far they had come that day?
I want John to be gazing fondly at himself in the mirror and, like those in the Ministry of Health who apparently have a list of never-to-be-uttered words, reminding himself of words he should avoid.
He may sing it if he wants, although it won't always scan - "You say shtrongly, and I say robustly, you say New Zealanders and I say something incomprehensible, shtrongly strongly, robustly, New Zealanders, mumble, let's call the whole thing off . . ."
And, while he is gazing happily at his freshly shaven countenance, and revelling in his cleverness under the bright lights, one day he might ask himself if the person who named the job summit groups workshtreams is really on his side?It's not clear to me how many shaving times it might take before the phrase "workstream chairs" trips lightly off the Prime Ministerial tongue.
He could set a good example and devote a day a fortnight to it. Self-improvement. It's the answer to the recession.
•Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
