It’s 6am and I’m sitting at a black oak desk and I’m working, because 6am is what one does when one has decided to take oneself seriously. It’s not actually oak, it’s whatever compound constitutes IKEA’s two-rungs-from-the-bottom standard. It’s as sturdy as it needs to be. It is black though, that much is true.
I met Kevin Barry on Saturday, at a signing. The net result is that I can never hang out with him ever again. I talked over him while he was asking my name, and then he was like “Hmm?” and I was like “Oh! Colm!” and before I could recover from that some photographer swooped in and made us stand there like goms for ages, him pretending to sign the book over and over till your man could get the shot and me with this thousand-watt gormless stare and no idea where to point it, and now everything’s just awkward forever and I’m going to live in Sweden, in a hut, in the dark. Never meet your heroes, or people who might one day become your heroes, or just basically anyone.
I’m sure I would fuck up in the same circumstance. Photographs like that are torturous. Much easier when these things happens naturally…
By chance, I spotted him walking towards me on Friday evening and I said hello and told him I was in the middle of his novel. And it was all very pleasant. And then we were both on our merry way. Sorry to rub it in!
I need to see this photo.
I’ve a Google Alert set up, linked to a low-orbit missile platform. If that photo ever surfaces, the internet (and 60% of the Earth’s surface) is going down.
John, I took some comfort from the fact that he obviously found it awkward as well. I mean, not nearly enough comfort to cancel out the rest of it, but you take what you can get.
This is how I feel every time I’m involved in any form of photography except where you remain gormless and absent I make an involuntary awkward face that looks like the face one would make if one discovered simultaneously that one was adopted and also the biological offspring of Margaret Thatcher, y’know, halfway between horrified and relieved.
I wouldn’t worry about it. I don’t think Kevin Barry is all there to be honest. I met him once as well while I was back-packing in Albania and I asked him the time and I’d swear he wasn’t with it at all. He mumbled something, so I was with the nuns at the time and mortified, so said THANK YOU loudly and made sure they didn’t Notice Anything Odd.
Sweden’s lovely at this time of the year. Daylight all day they say.
Now that I’ve said it, I do really want to go to Sweden. Maybe… maybe Kevin would like to join me?