The lights have been set up and my son is ready for his close-up. He’s primed and preened in a nice jumper, hair brushed in that one way that means he’s either going to mass or having a photoshoot. Actually, in a strange reversal of my own childhood, he has now attended twice as many photoshoots as church services – so perhaps we’re gearing him up to rebel via a dramatic lean toward Catholic devotion in his mid-teens. At least my dad will be happy.
For now though, it’s time to update the photo for the print versions of this column, which means my wife and I spend an afternoon cajoling him into being as toothsome as he can be. Getting it right is important – because his previous photo was a bone of contention in our marriage.
For one thing, he hasn’t looked much like a newborn for a very long time, and it seems strange for my tales of a 16-month old to be accompanied by a photo of me holding a child so young his fingerprints haven’t yet hardened – not least one who, looking back, is a dead ringer for Phil Mitchell struggling through any flavour of pot noodle except chicken and mushroom. Which brings me to the other main gripe my wife has about that picture.
She’s long maintained I chose it because I, and I alone, looked moderately handsome in it, even though it made my son look like an alien that’s just received an unexpectedly large gas bill. This is a charge I can’t really defend myself against. Primarily because I have admitted many times in person, and at least once in this very column, that this is precisely what happened.
My defence is twofold: First, since I am the one who actually writes these articles, I should be allowed to use my beauty to promote their contents (and vice versa). Second, if someone takes 400 pictures of me then, yes, I am going to pick the most handsome one, whether my son looks like a half-digested turnip in it or not.
Frankly, I’m surprised this is even a discussion. I need the help; he doesn’t. Babies are an aesthetic free hit. I, on the other hand, have about four angles that work for me, roughly once a fortnight, and usually while catching my impeccable male model-like reflection during night-time tube trips. Sidebar: I have never worked out if I do actually look super great in the darkened echo of night tube windows, or if the fact I’m on the tube at night means I’m sufficiently pissed to regard myself with a smirking, ‘Hmmm you still got it.’
In the end, my son did everything he could to replicate his first shoot, spending an hour plaintively wailing as if each snap of the flashbulb was a precursor to the entrance of a firing squad. But, it all came good with the shot you see before you – me sporting a sassy little kink in my hip, he with the folded hands of a gentle little cartoon church mouse. Perhaps there’s room in the family for two models after all.
Follow Séamas on Twitter @shockproofbeats
