One little song

With my bro Ferg in Galway yesterday.

Hoping he might get the hint

It took over two and a half weeks for him to ask me out, and even then I had to instigate things. "You can buy me lunch," I texted him, hoping he might get the hint and buy me lunch or something.

He got it. And now here we are sitting in a park in the sun with his arm draped over the back of the bench behind me like it doesn't matter.

"Where did you get that?" he asks, pointing at the scar on my chin. I like the way he looks at me, steadily, like he doesn't care who gets turned to stone. I don't have an answer, though. Nobody ever asks about that scar; nobody's ever been close enough to see it, I don't think.

I look up to the left side of my brain where I shelve the stories. I must have something about a girl with a scar on her chin. But nothing is alphabetised — it's chaos up there! — and all I can think about is kissing him.

"Are you making something up?" he asks.

"Shark attack," I say, eventually, decidedly. And then I look away again.

False Identities

These three pics are from my father's book of large-format portrait photography: his grand-daughter Selkie; his friend Graham; and me.

My father is old-school when it comes to photography — cue heated cross-generational debates at the dinner table. He shoots with a Rosewood 54 and a mahogany wholeplate, which basically means he only gets one shot per shoot – so you better stand really, really still when you're posing for him or be prepared to feel the wrath of Bruce rain down upon you. This method of working is completely alien to me (my preference being to snap two or three hundred shots at a time on automatic and then airbrush the shit out of them in Photoshop afterwards) but it's always exciting to have to wait and see the finished product when he's done with the dish-developing. Yes, dish-developing! With liquid and stuff.

You can flick through the first 15 pages of his book and order a copy here. There are some other people in it you might recognise too.

Two questions

Sometimes I'm overcome with shyness, which surprises some people and they say you? Shy? And then they laugh and I say yeah, me, shy. And then I shrug. It happens to the best of us.

Maybe this is why I liked drinking so much. When you're feeling like being a little outgoing it's good to have something to hide behind. Blogging; that also works. Writing stuff all over the internet for everyone and his dog to find. Yeah, drinking and blogging — though never at the same time.

It was my mother who taught me to drink and it was my mother who taught me to write, and it was my mother who gave me the best advice I've ever been given in my life:

"If you're in a social situation and you feel a little shy, just turn to the person next to you and ask them two questions about themselves. It doesn't matter which two questions; as long as they're questions about themselves they'll think you're the most interesting person they've met all night."