This Weekend

The head and shoulder shots were ok, she said, but they didn't like the full length ones, they said next time tell your friend to focus on the subject and not the background.

I didn't go to the second lesson, I said, I was barred out. I told you that.

They said they only want black and white and you should try taking them outdoors - in a garden or a park.

What's the point, I wondered, of black and white shots in a garden or a park. Maybe that was the second lesson.

But I'd flunked the hands-in-the-pillow case bit. I just hated it. Couldn't do it. Couldn't place what exactly, but It reminded me of something. Something unpleasant.

Maybe I did over-react.

My friend, the actress.

Who has rarely been in paid employment.

She wants to sign up with an agency specialising in - the unusual.

She also wants to avoid paying a professional photographer.

And paying £10 to have the pictures printed up at Snappy Snaps too if she can help it.

I tell her I think the reason why she doesn't get any work is the way she looks...the pantomime make-up...the way she dresses....Jackie Stallone meets Abba.

She disagrees. She thinks the way she looks makes her more memorable, makes her stand out among the thousands of other unemployable thesps.

She stands out all right.

She says they want lots of atmosphere.

We go to the Chip.

Is it all right if I take some pictures I ask the guy behind the bar. I'm a little nervous. Its Giro day.

He says ok. He looks like that Italian referee.

We pick a cubicle. She blends seamlessly into the nicotine ravaged Victorian gin palace remnants and the MFI add ons. The cerise spandex pants darned at the crotch are out of sight under the table. But not for long. She is just warming up.

She removes her electric blue distractor and unpins her hair, forty shades of ginger tom. She goes into full Zoolander mode. You could have heard a pint glass drop.

A week later she is really pleased with the results. They're really good she says, full of admiration, they're great, I look totally fucking mental so I do.

But...the full length shots have been rejected by the agency.

I had difficulty in getting her all in. I had to stand right at the other side of the bar.
The end result was a great expanse of sticky gobbed on fag strewn carpet, in the foreground a man slumped unconscious over a copy of Time Out, in the background
an astonished looking barman and in the far distance a diminutive figure, an ageing telly tubby with sucked in cheeks posing provocatively next to a sign which read no alcohol at the snooker table.

Well, what do they want. I seemed to remember from lesson one something about three part composition.

My back hurts. All this is taking way longer than the care in the community photography course had.

This time we go to the park.

Where the air ambulance usually lands.

They appear to have removed all the benches.

Which means the regulars - ten or fifteen of them - are hunkered down together in a corner, discussing the possibility of a letter of complaint to their local MP.

To-day my friend is wearing several layers of clothing which she peels off at intervals to achieve different looks....Jackie....Abba...Abba....Jackie.....

From a distance, this could clearly be misconstrued. Several of the brethern start to show an interest. They are heading in our direction.

OK. C'mon. Lets go. Its a wrap.

I leave her struggling to get back into her extensive neon wardrobe.

I'm wrecked. I need....television, and lots of it.

I toyed with the idea of sending an account of my adventures to the Guardian for their Last Weekend spot,. but I knew they'd only say not quite for us. Hard to compete - on product placement alone - with wee Isaac Julien, artist and film-maker, who began his weekend recovering from his after-show dinner party at Yauatcha in Soho and perhaps - perhaps? - too many drinks at his opening at the Victoria Miro gallery. Bless.

I turn the telly on.

Oh Christ, you don't want to watch this do you, he says.

100 Sexiest Moments? Yeah. I do.

But its just another of those shite compilations.

Its also the only chance I'm ever going to get to see Richard Gere's langer.

Fuck's sake. You ought to get out more.

Maybe I would, if you ever paid the rent.

There you are, I thought, end of a perfect day. I've become a cliche, with or without the Guardian's help....the middle-aged woman with the live in son.