MeMeMe and More Me

I don't have a great record when it comes to having photographs taken. Normally at parties, celebrations and stuff, I think I'm looking great - in fact I think I'm looking pretty fantastic - until the pictures come back and I'm the drunken one with the bright red face. Plus I always break every rule us girls are supposed to have learnt at birth - those ones about picking ugly friends so we look good - and instead I grab all the good-looking people in the room and DON'T LET GO, not even when they're looking slightly scared and are just about to resort to begging....


(Here's me with the lovely poet, Catherine Smith last week, for example)

So, when it was time to have some new photographs taken, I was a bit nervous. (I knew it was time for new photos because I got bored of the disappointed faces I saw when I turned up five years after the last lot got taken). I spent hours trying to decide what to wear, only to find Ellen, the photographer, turned up wearing the only thing I could ever want to put on ...



Still, onwards and upwards. I didn't think it would be the best possible start if I asked her to take her clothes off straight away - she's a serious and wonderful photographer, so I made the most of my own mostly black and white wardrobe. And do you know - it was knackering. Ellen made it fun, but gosh, Kate Moss earns her money. Anyway, it was a bit disappointing I didn't look like Kate in the phtographs, but after the initial shock that what I see in the mirror is the real 'me', I'm pleased with the results, even in some of them my eyes look a bit starey and scary. Reminds me too much of when I used to be called Dracula at school because of my dark hair and because I was always 'looking at people'. Well, they were jolly lucky I didn't bite them.

And the best news is that apparently I'm too smiley in all of them, so we have to do it all over again. More mememememe... And now I know Ellen well enough to ask if I can borrow her top!

And even more me - apologies for this but it is my blog - here's a piece I just written for the Guardian on my Top Ten books about friendships. Have already had several emails suggesting books I should have put in, so am currently collating my top million books. Suggestions welcome ...