Me, Me, Me

We recently found a photo album, containing pictures from our university days. And between dewy-eyed reminiscences and profound realisations of our own mortality, I couldn't help but think: this will generate a blog post.

Posts full of pictures are much less work than those composed of thoughts and ideas and pesky words.

I will include three photos in this post. They're all of me. That may seem self-obsessed, but that's only because it is. I feel I can comment on myself more freely than I could on anyone else. Also, I'm gorgeous.

I like the below pictures because I'm not smiling. It must have been as a student that I figured out that tactic. Never smile, never back down, and never apologise.

(Sorry)

So here is Student Paul: A Pictorial

First up, we have a photo taken at a barbecue in my second year.

I look bored in this picture. It's rare to capture boredom in a photograph. People generally act like they're having a good time. I have flouted this convention.

I still have this shirt.

The ethereal picture quality is because I don't have a scanner and so had to take photos of the photos with my phone camera.

I can already tell from this description that this blog post won't be very interesting. I knew it would be self-indulgent, but thought I might come up with some comedy gold. That hasn't happened yet.

Annotating things is a good route to humour. That's why directors' DVD commentaries are so good. And why snide remarks made about cinema adverts are always hilarious.

But there's not much to say about a picture of me, looking bored, wearing a red shirt.

Unless that light colouration on the right of the frame is a ghost.

And it's not. I would have remembered there being a ghost at that barbecue. I wouldn't have been so bored if there was a ghost there, bantering, drinking Budweiser, turning the chops.

I'm also wondering if I've posted this picture before. I can't think why I would have done. I've never had a scanner. Maybe I've posted another photo of myself in that shirt. I do wear it every Wednesday and every Sunday. As a tribute to my late tailor.

The next picture makes me look like a teenage Terminator.

This was taken in Lucy's room in the second year. Behind me, you can see a postcard of Camus on her wardrobe - an image I have now surpassed.

The luminous logo on my jumper is reflecting the camera flash, which makes me look like a robot.

This is the photo they'd use in the newspaper the day after I'd killed everyone at a bus-stop, or thrown myself under a baker. My hair looks wet, as though I'd been out in the rain getting emotional with Rutger Hauer.

I still have this jumper.

Finally, we have a photo taken on the day I finished my exams.


That's why I'm wearing a suit, some garlands, a carnation, and the ruddy pisshead complexion of a Victorian judge.

This picture was taken sometime between finishing my first bottle of champagne (well, Cava - we're not that rich) and attempting to play the Medieval Madness pinball machine in the JCR.

I think this photo should be circulated to all those people who hate Oxbridge as an emblem of idiotic debauchery. I'm like a one-man Bullingdon Club (except I don't think pinball was generally part of their antics).

Also, I didn't generally do anything that debauched. Unless watching all of the Godfather trilogy in one night counts as debauched (which it should - there are children in Africa who haven't even seen Part I). I wasn't really as annoying as I look in that picture. I don't think so, anyway.

I don't think I still own any of these items of clothing, though I do still have the toy gold medal just visible around my neck.

Lucy took all of these, I think. She has a good knack for extracting interesting expressions. For example, she once took a picture of the Queen flipping the bird.

I'm going to post this now, even though I didn't approach anything interesting. At least I'll have done seven posts in September. The fewest since October 2007, but not an all-time low.

I'll have to raise my game next month.