More obvious boobs

Imagine if someone you'd known for several years suddenly showed up looking ever-so-slightly different, in unfathomable ways.

I don't mean a haircut or a different cardigan. Nor even a new nose or more obvious boobs. I'm talking about when something fundamental - something essential but indefinable - seems out of place.

And so, over the weekend, I met - for the first time - the identical twin of a guy I've known for almost five years. It was a little unnerving.

As is the general way with twins, they looked the same, but not quite the same. But the similarities themselves weren't the issue. After all, I knew a pair of identical twins at school, and their twin-ness seemed to wear off within minutes.

I think it was more the fact that, unlike the school twins, to whom I had been introduced at the same time and whom I knew roughly-equally well, this time I was familiar with one half of the set - the 'original' - and was confronted by what looked to me like a rip-off version - a reinterpretation. No offence.

I found myself trying to spot differences, both physically and otherwise, but I kept coming back to the similarities. The voice, the pauses, the glances, various tiny gestures.

No doubt if I got to know the 'new' twin as well as the old there would be nothing to blog about, save for sharing the occasionally hysterical reactions of strangers confronted by a pair of identical-looking twins for the first time.

But because I knew one without the other, meeting the other was a strangely disconcerting experience - a doppelganger made flesh - and one to remember.