Birthday Photo Surprise

In my previous post, I said I was more upset to leave behind my extensive record collection than I was to leave my family. Obviously, I was exaggerating. I adore my family. Mostly because they make me laugh. 

For my Mum’s birthday, my 2 sisters and I usually take her out for a girlies day, often to the seaside town of Brighton because we love it there. Sadly, it is a bit too far for me for a day trip these days so I have to live vicariously through their stories now. This year, my younger sister, Lisette, bought a professional family photography session as we don’t have many great photos of us all together.

Unfortunately she didn’t research the photographer beforehand. His studio was miles away from where they live, in a seedy, rundown part of a small town. When he finally showed up late, he shuffled in looking like he needed a good bath and new clothes. They were not encouraged when he opened up and let them in to his creative lair. The place was not particularly clean, he didn't offer them anything to drink (although they were thankful for this omission), the photos on the walls were not particularly inspiring and the only ‘prop’ he produced was an ugly plastic stool.

But worst of all, he didn’t appear to have a sense of humour - sacrilege in our family - which didn’t help when my older sister, Sue, produced her surprise. Not wanting to be left out of the ‘family’ photo, I had sent Sue a head shot pic of me and she had printed it out life-size and stuck it to a piece of card on a stick. Just as he was about to take his first shot, up I popped at the back in a kind of long distance photo bomb! Sue said I looked a bit like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. Just a weird bodyless head floating at the back. He looked at my family in silence as they all fell about laughing.

They continued with the photo shoot, any confidence they might have had in his artistic ability slowly draining away as he got them doing ridiculous poses then looking at his shots and saying "Oh" in a disappointed voice.  One of the shots he got them doing was to put their hands on their hips in a kind of sexy, fashion model pose. Sue couldn't keep a straight face as she said our Mum looked like the Queen and Lisette, a Buddhist nun you might remember, could not have looked more uncomfortable. He then got my sisters lying down on the floor with Mum standing over them, to all intends like the Queen with her corgies!

They went back this weekend to view the masterpieces. This time the place was much cleaner and he produced tea and macaroons, so perhaps he had been having an off day the previous weekend. Or maybe he realised he was in the presence of royalty! From the 40 minute shoot, however, he could only produce 23 pics that he felt were worth projecting onto the enormous screen, accompanied by cheesy love-story music blaring from speakers. They could only find one photo in which they all looked nice and it obviously was not the one with me included.

To make me feel better, they went to an old fashioned photo booth and took a pic with me.

God, I miss them.