London - Hidden in the grubby back pocket of my 11-year-old’s rucksack is her new school photo.
At least I think it’s a portrait of her - it’s hard to tell so little does it resemble my irreverent, blonde, blue-eyed pre-teen. When she sees I’ve found it, the inevitable indignant eruption occurs.
“Give it back,” she yells. “I have to burn it.”
I can see her point. In her stiff navy blue and yellow school uniform she looks as if she’s auditioning to be a Seventies TV presenter. Her strained, over-enthusiastic grin and long, glossy hair parted neatly to the side are completely out of character. If a kidnapper had sent it to me as evidence of her well-being I would have to ask: “Who is this and what have you done with Gracie?”
Obviously, I have to keep it because that’s what you do, isn’t it? I will add it to our school photo mountain - when you have four children you stockpile these never-quite-right pictures of children who only faintly resemble the ones you gave birth to.
Maybe my offspring just aren’t photogenic (did I say that out loud?) or maybe when schools say the photographer is coming, what they really mean is we’ve paid the caretaker overtime to take some snaps, which we will charge you a fortune for and which you will try to offload on polite relatives every Christmas.
One of my least favourite shots is my son’s infant school picture where he has a giant blue bruise on his chin, a front tooth missing and a cut above his eyebrow. He is wearing a T-shirt with ‘Monster’ written on it. The next year he was dressed as Batman crossed with a Ninja Turtle crossed with Barbie. I’d forgotten it was school photo day.
Another picture that makes me laugh out loud is my two eldest daughters sitting as far apart as it is possible to sit in a school picture, giving each other the ‘side eye’ after having a bust-up.
That was around the time the eldest, now 13, always introduced her younger sister as: “Gracie who lives withus.”
Mabel, my four-year-old, had her first school photo this year and it makes her look like Angela Merkel ramming home a particularly savage point about fiscal irresponsibility in an EU meeting, so fierce is her expression.
It scared me so much when I opened the envelope that I made the same kind of noise you would make if you opened a box with a giant spider in it.
So, school photos have been a decade-long disappointment for me. There’s always a questionable accessory, bizarre hairstyle, unidentifiable stain, new injury, never-seen-before expression or item of clothing I don’t recognise in the picture.
It’s not that I expect perfection or particularly care how my children look or what they wear, but I do hope for some sort of familiar resemblance in a school picture.
My friend who is a photographer says it usually goes wrong because the person taking the picture often asks the child to smile.
“Kids hate it when you ask them to say cheese,” she says. “They stiffen.” Or make a face like someone has shouted “wild tiger on the loose” (as was the case with last year’s one of my son).
All of this clearly adds to the rich tapestry of life with school-age children, which would be fine if it wasn’t so damned expensive to buy the photographs.
I don’t know any mom who has refused to buy the shots and, in fact, most of us buy extras. We even have key rings fobs with the images on.
The thing is that the years speed by as soon as they go to school, so any memento of this precious time is priceless for parents.
Plus, no one wants to tell their child the school pictures didn’t turn out so well so we won’t be buying them.
This year, one of my children’s schools has introduced props into the group pictures to liven things up. This approach certainly makes for an unusual snapshot. My son is holding a recorder, an instrument he doesn’t play, in a jaunty fashion.
It’s a novel idea and I will be lobbying for it to be introduced in new official Royal Family portraits: perhaps Prince George with a trombone.
Daily Mail
* Lorraine CANDY is editor-in-chief of Elle magazine.