I'm having a day of arts and crafts which was supposed soothe me and drag me away from the television that, as my friend Rosie says (and I have ripped this off from her) is beginning to mock me and so has lost the ability to comfort me, but then the darn paper won't stick and the end boards have warped and the guillotine has, like me, lost its edge and so I have ended up abandoning the project for the moment.
I had a photographer from the Guardian here yesterday morning taking a picture that's supposed to accompany an article they are publishing next week about the difficulties in 'dating' (God I hate that word) when you live with your kids. It's not that it happens very often that I get the chance to say casually to someone: 'Oh why not come round for a drink.' However, even when it does I'm never here alone, though I always seem to be here alone the rest of the time. Or as good as. The youngest rarely leaves her bedroom except to roll her eyes at me and maybe slam a door or two, but that doesn't mean that even if I had someone to drag into my own bedroom and lock the door that I could. It's a moot point in any case. Never going to happen. Not even looking. But it made a funny article.
So there's the photographer at 11am asking me if she can take a picture of me lying on my bed.
No.
I haven't made it. It's pink and the sheets are orange, so No. I am not Paula Yates. And NO.
Okay then, apparently it's me posing at a table set for a romantic dinner for two looking glum.
A romantic dinner? What you mean like the one I had at the Godfather's place last week with the champagne and the candles that was followed 8 days later with an email saying he was spending the weekend with his 'long-term squeeze'? (I seem fated only to meet men who are already involved but like to keep their balls in the air anyway which, I can only assume, is the only way they seem to know they have any).
We set it up. I got out the bottle of Bolly from the fridge where it will be vinegar before there's an occasion sufficiently celebratory to merit opening it, and I stood at the table looking glum.
Erm, you look too happy.
I modified my expression.
Now you look suicidal - can we go for something in the middle?
I tried again.
Nope, radiant. She showed me the picture at the back of the camera - if I looked that nice in real life I would definitely be opening the Bolly. It's a lovely picture.
Yeah, but it's not glum. Try again.
Nope even more radiant - lovely supper in the oven and you're going to eat it all yourself, sod men, who wants them... Try rueful.
How the * do you do rueful? Acting is not my forte... I thought about the missed weekend in the Cotswolds due to two tablespoons of snow.
Pissed off, really pissed off. You want to try for glum but pretty.
I posed again.
Nope truly radiant, couldn't give a stuff that you're eating alone, perfectly happy, not a care in the world.
I started to laugh.
Now you just look delighted.
I couldn't keep a straight face and all subsequent pictures made me look deranged.
Let's have one final crack at it. Think of something sad.
Plenty of choice there, so I did - the phone never rings. I'm looking at another weekend sitting in the house with a teenager who hates me. I have no life. I have no money. I have no cleaner (she quit two days earlier). I have a hole in my ceiling. My ex-father in law has been in town for a week and never expressed an interest in seeing me despite having been my family for 25 years. It's like the Wheel of Misfortune.
I think we've got it, she said, finally.
Do I look glum enough?
No, she said, You look wistful, but that'll have to do.
She packed up her camera and I drove her off to the tube station and I took myself off to work.
The minute I arrived in the office I took off my coat and hung it in it's usual place on the back of my chair.
'Oh, look at you in your red polka dot dress (new from LK Bennett on its first outing). You look just like Minnie Mouse,' said Fran.
If only the photographer had been there to capture that moment.
Glum. Definitely, absolutely, positively really, really glum...
