Silk Purses, Sow's Ears and the Vanity Gene

On Saturday Walter Neilson from The Scotsman came to the house and spent just under two hours taking photographs of me. He was a very nice man with groovy glasses who had obviously never heard about the inadvisability of trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I offered him my eminently photographable sons, my cat (the good-looking thin one), and the truly fabulous view out my front window, but he was determined to get a picture of me.

Which raises that cosmic question - why are some people photogenic, and some of us so utterly not? And why do the unphotogenic ones CARE so much? Am I a worse writer because I can crack a camera lens at forty paces? Will people not buy my book because of it?

Of course not!

Let's face it, it's got nothing to do with anything but vanity - that odd thing we harbour no matter what the evidence. I expect there's a gene for it, right beside the gene for fantasy generally. And if that's the case - I spent a good bit of time this Saturday on my own line of work! So good for me. It's not all Word Counts, you know!

Cheers, Joan "My-face-I-don't-mind-it-cause-I-am-behind-it" (as my mother has been known to say) Lennon.