Rushing out to a photo shoot I realized that it was raining and grabbed the first umbrella that came to hand – a big, tattered, broken old thing that a random friend left behind.
I own a substantial number of umbrellas that are stylish and attractive, but it would have been far too clever to dig one out given that the brolly became a major prop for the photographs.
Since the article is about my experiences as a teen parent, the elder child consented to let us exploit her.
This is rare to the point of nonexistent; through the ten years of promoting my magazine and books books I’ve never willingly allowed the children to be depicted. But my daughter is officially a grown-up now, and makes her own decisions about these matters.
We stood about Parker’s Piece in the rain and wind chatting as the nice man from the paper snapped away. At some point he commented about the article They say it is a jolly story, yeah?
Well, no. I would describe it as a long fractious rant about discrimination, but replied Um, okay.
My daughter provided a constant stream of hilarious stories and we laughed and laughed. On our way to the next destination the photographer commented She is a lively one!
That would of course be an understatement.
Fetching up at the Arts Picturehouse cafe, we asked permission to shoot more and then arranged ourselves at a table by the window. The fact that it was a Saturday afternoon meant that the place was crowded with people staring and openly eavesdropping.
My cover, in other words, is officially blown. From now on I will not be able to get away with claiming that I do nothing when asked about my work.
When we finished and said our farewells the photographer turned to the girl and said What bribe did you get for this?
It hadn’t occurred to her to ask for a bribe, or that the process would be simultaneously fun and unnerving.
I sighed and handed over thirty quid.