Dear J
We didn’t enter the caravan competition to win it. Well, I didn’t, anyway. I entered it so that Jols and I could plough a disproportionate amount of time and energy into writing some lyrics that would easily be the greatest ever written, and so we could then indulge in a hearty dessert of outrage that the prize had been given to same lame-arsed ‘optimised’ effort constructed by a professional competition enterer.
This was the amount of psychological commitment I invested in the ‘Princess and the P-Reg’ project.
I was not prepared to find myself sitting in front of a chintzy pimped caravan in the middle of a rain-swept Worcester High Street at school home-time, sipping champagne and mugging for the camera. But if I have learned anything in the last decade or so, it’s to mask a lack of preparedness with gusto.
As mentioned previously, the White Stuff people had generously towed the caravan to Worcester and decked us out in free clothes in order to get a bit of PR out of the whole thing. Who were we to object?
I haven’t seen the photos – they are apparently going to be touted round the high-circulation caravan magazines, of which there are many – but I imagine my amazing ‘trap’ double-chin will put in a solid cameo, and my ’stress eye’ (an unknown characteristic prior to our wedding photos being developed) will do its very best Captain Darling impression.
During the shoot, the good folk of Worcester trudged by more or less without comment, but one or two schoolkids milled around and pronounced our new acquisition “well good”. I managed to blank everything that was going on around me, and just act as stupidly as possible, which I’m sure to the White Stuff crowd just looked like I was acting like a normal human being.
The only bit of control I managed to retain over the proceedings was the growing of a couple of mil’s worth of beard, which should have the effect of making me look tired and/or homeless. Certainly it led people at work to give me a wide berth, assuming I’d got divorced or lost a relative or something.
Luck was on my side for one aspect of the event. The White Stuff contingent let slip that one of my work colleagues had found a moment in his busy schedule to contact the White Stuff press office and ask for the photos. After mulling this point for a while, I vetoed the suggestion (ever the fun suck hole), and we came up with the compromise of taking a ’special’ photo to send him.
As ever,
jx
PS. I withdraw my scorn at Catherine for letting the Birmingham Mail photographer snap her in a happy-go-lucky ‘elbow on pile of books’ pose – a shot which has yet to surface.
The princess photo-shoot
Dear J
We didn’t enter the caravan competition to win it. Well, I didn’t, anyway. I entered it so that Jols and I could plough a disproportionate amount of time and energy into writing some lyrics that would easily be the greatest ever written, and so we could then indulge in a hearty dessert of outrage that the prize had been given to same lame-arsed ‘optimised’ effort constructed by a professional competition enterer.
This was the amount of psychological commitment I invested in the ‘Princess and the P-Reg’ project.
I was not prepared to find myself sitting in front of a chintzy pimped caravan in the middle of a rain-swept Worcester High Street at school home-time, sipping champagne and mugging for the camera. But if I have learned anything in the last decade or so, it’s to mask a lack of preparedness with gusto.
As mentioned previously, the White Stuff people had generously towed the caravan to Worcester and decked us out in free clothes in order to get a bit of PR out of the whole thing. Who were we to object?
I haven’t seen the photos – they are apparently going to be touted round the high-circulation caravan magazines, of which there are many – but I imagine my amazing ‘trap’ double-chin will put in a solid cameo, and my ’stress eye’ (an unknown characteristic prior to our wedding photos being developed) will do its very best Captain Darling impression.
During the shoot, the good folk of Worcester trudged by more or less without comment, but one or two schoolkids milled around and pronounced our new acquisition “well good”. I managed to blank everything that was going on around me, and just act as stupidly as possible, which I’m sure to the White Stuff crowd just looked like I was acting like a normal human being.
The only bit of control I managed to retain over the proceedings was the growing of a couple of mil’s worth of beard, which should have the effect of making me look tired and/or homeless. Certainly it led people at work to give me a wide berth, assuming I’d got divorced or lost a relative or something.
Luck was on my side for one aspect of the event. The White Stuff contingent let slip that one of my work colleagues had found a moment in his busy schedule to contact the White Stuff press office and ask for the photos. After mulling this point for a while, I vetoed the suggestion (ever the fun suck hole), and we came up with the compromise of taking a ’special’ photo to send him.
As ever,
jx
PS. I withdraw my scorn at Catherine for letting the Birmingham Mail photographer snap her in a happy-go-lucky ‘elbow on pile of books’ pose – a shot which has yet to surface.