My contact lenses and dyed blonde hair must have made me reasonably attractive because one day a photographer from a daily paper asked me and a group of my friends if we would like to have our photographs in the paper. It sounded fun and so off we went to the river, me in my bikini and being told to look "sensuous". Well we English girls have long suffered from "who-does-she -think-she is" syndrome and try not to stand out. I couldn't really do "sensual" but I could do happy and cheerful. So I got some lovely ,glossy photos of me smiling away in the water. My photo appeared in the paper and I thought no more about it. Then one day there was a huge drama. Someone told Grandpa that my picture was in the Scottish edition of the paper. The trouble was, that, as in the game of Chinese Whispers the description of me underneath had radically changed. No longer was I half-heartedly studying Business Studies in a Polytechnic, I was running Grandpa 's business, on my own, single-handedly- in my bikini. Grandpa went off to get all the negatives and then everything was put in a draw and forgotten.
A little while later I did some modelling for a holiday job. This was easy, I had to look wind-swept and slightly frazzled putting a temporary wind shield on a car. there was a life size cardboard cutout of me at the Motor Show, and that was nice enough.
I also did a modelling show for a local clothes shop, in the local village hall. I modelled a purple midi coat. My Mum and Dad were watching me with pride, they like me in the coat so much, they got for me as a present. I wore it for years.
I have over 300 photos on my phone, and stacks of albums recording the last 20 years, but only those photos of my youth and so I feel very grateful to the photographer who thought I was worth taking pictures of.
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