Friday Five Photo: Before I Was Butch

OK, Friday Five, that’s it – you and me are through. I tried to make this relationship work, I really did (well, I tried twice, but who’s counting), but the thing is, Friday Five: it’s not me, it’s you. I mean, it all started out well enough, with questions about stuffed animals and, er, extremes of temperature, but soon you were all, “Which one of your friends has the dreamiest eyes?”, “what’s hanging from your ceiling?” and “where is your nearest playground?” and I was all, WHO CARES? I’m pretty sure no one wants to hear me listing the names of my friends, talking about my ceiling or providing the utterly fascinating information that there is a playground not five minutes walk from here, so that’s it: enough.

From now on, I’m going to be playing a new game every Friday, and you are welcome to join me. It’s going to be called the “Friday Photo”, and what will happen is that every Friday I will post … can you even begin to guess?! Yes, I will post a photo! Well, that’s the idea, anyway. The problem with that is that Friday is my Bad Day – the day when it’s all workworkwork, so I don’t really get the chance to blog much on a Friday, hence the fact that I am actually writing this entry LAST SUNDAY, with my words coming to you as if from THE PAST. Spooky, no? I really hope I don’t die between now (Sunday) and the time this entry is published, otherwise you’ll all be really freaked out to see me suddenly start bitching about The Friday Five from beyond the grave.

Anyway, here is this week’s photo:

You can probably tell from the hair (and the butchness) that this photo is another in my occasional series of embarrassing photos of me as a child. This particular photo is notable, not so much for the “Double Dummy” action going on there (yes, we in the UK call pacifiers “dummies”. Never fails to make me smile.), but for the fact that when I was shown this picture when I was a slightly older child, I immediately started up a weeping and a wailing, and the only thing my parents could get out of me were the words, “MY LEG! I ONLY HAVE ONE LEG! WHY DID YOU NOT TELL ME I ONLY HAD ONE LEG!”

Indeed, when you look at the picture again, you’ll see that it does indeed look like I have only one leg. You’d have thought the fact that, when I was shown it, I was very obviously standing there ON MY TWO LEGS would have been a clue, though, hmmm? I think this says a lot more about my mentality than I really like to dwell on, to be honest.

Also: in a related incident, when I was a bit older again, my grandad once told me that my leg had fallen off and rolled under the chair. Yes, I believed him.

Anyway, I think I’ve probably embarrassed myself enough for one day now, so it’sback to work for me. (Unless, of course, I really did die in between writing this entry and it being published, in which case at least I don’t have to spend my Friday night working.)