Coping mechanisms...

The camera, it is fair to say, doesn't like me.
There are very few photographs of my maternal grandmother, Eileen, because she looked at them and tore them up. Thus primed, there are more of my mother because we never let her look at them long enough to enable her to do the same.
I have pressed the delete button on somebody else's phone as often as I possibly can. It is either a genetic predisposition, or it is a form of inverted vanity, I suppose. I never look as I imagine I look to the outside world. To be blunt, I look tubbier, stockier, and homely in the British sense of the word. I don't mind this in the slightest, but I am just choosy about which pictures should be recorded for posterity. You could say, I am not big on selfies. I regard with amusement the current devotion to them.
However, I have to say, that I read with awe last week about the airline passenger who posted a photo of himself posing with a hijacker. Well, I know it wasn't a selfie per se, but it was a remarkable thing to do nevertheless. He's come in for a bit of flack, being described on the one hand as "highly irresponsible" and on the other as providing the authorities with vital information regarding the supposed explosive belt. You never know how you are going to behave in a crisis. Only outcome will determine whether or not it was the right thing to do. Everyone survived.

It brought back memories of when my car, a Cambridge blue Mini was car-jacked at four o'clock in the afternoon in a street opposite my house. There was a gang of three youths who surrounded me demanding the car keys which I had in my hand. I told them to eff off, very loudly. Several times. But they snatched my keys anyway. I used my handbag as weapon and hit one on the head. Even as I did so, I knew it was a futile, even foolish gesture, but I felt I couldn't give in without a protest, feeble as it was. The bag  was then also snatched, so that was a success then. But I had had my moment of being a Granny from The Beano, as my precious wee car roared off down the road.

I wish someone had taken a picture of that moment. Of me. Not the car.

Ben Innes, Health and Safety auditor
and hijacker.