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08 January 2007

PAPARAZZI

Today is another momentous day. But what, I hear you cry, could possibly top a day witnessing Phil in his plimpsoles?

Well, I shall explain.

Our village is normally a quiet backwater. A haven for the potterer. We have good people here. There are no noisy neighbours. No caravans parked in front of the houses. No dogs with big teeth and noisome barks, on ropes pulling steel kennels halfway across the drive as you walk past.

But today, Hemingford Abbots is smack in the centre of the world’s media spotlight. Camera crews, huge satellite dishes, caravans and generators storming the normally quiet byways of our village. And it is… All My Fault.

As I have already mentioned, Ian at Sue Ryder Care had sent out press releases about my endeavours and today the world’s press beat a path to my door.

Well, to be more accurate, Helen popped round the back of the cottage as she had spotted me filling up the coal bucket in the garage. She is from the Hunts Post. She has a very nice black camera which she points at me. I wonder about the significance of the colour of her camera, but feel it is not the right time to ask such an important question. Which is a shame, for as you know, I do like black. I have to wear my rucksack and hold my boots in my hands: Disgracefully they are still very muddy after yesterday’s walk, and look brown and not black. I am ashamed. Still, the brown might look grey in the newspaper.

My face is hanging at half mast and I think I am dribbling from my morning’s efforts at the New Dentist. (My Old Dentist had given up after a series of close encounters with my bite reflex.) I had bitten my lower lip in the car on the way home and there is a faint trickle of blood down my chin. Helen takes half a dozen or so pictures, says some very kind words, and leaves me in a daze.

If she is the local representation of the world’s curse of ‘paparazzi’, I wonder what all the fuss is about. Bring them on, I say! I can take it!

No sooner had I uttered these words, than the Peterborough Evening Telegraph is on the phone. I know in an instant how Kate & Naomi feel. I need a bolt hole. I need a friend to put me up for a week.

No further comment!

3 comments:

  1. SLR professional cameras tend to be black - I think - to help avoid the reflection of flashlight back onto the subject. These days its more of a trend.

    In the days of metal-cased cameras (as opposed to today's plastic bodies) you really felt everything had come of age when a bit of the black paint had flaked off!

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