When you have hours to spare each day you sometimes enter competitions. In this case I won a make-over and photoshoot day in London and went this Saturday with my good friend Natalie because it was her Birthday last week.
So I set off down to London on Saturday morning, braving a migraine and the Chiltern Line crowdedness of their Saturday run to London (why don't they ever put extra carriages on - there are always people standing!!?!?) We had a brief stop in Banbury whilst the paramedics pulled an unconscious man off the train (possibly collapsed from sheer numbers of people???). The guy sitting next to me on the train was extremely anxious because he'd already had to switch to this train cos Euston line not running and was due to be at an important meeting at 11 when we were due to arrive in London at 11.06. He was frantically phoning various people to work out the best way to get there, before settling into listening to his i-pod at an extremely high volume. Now, I have a reasonable volume of hair covering my ears and I also think I might be a little deaf (cos I always have to turn the TV up) but I could still hear every word of his selection of indie tunes as he tried to forget his impending disaster of a meeting... I must be getting old not to appreciate that...
In any case, because I'd loaded up on codeine I managed to sleep the rest of the way to London and on arrival the adrenalin set in because of the sheer number of people at Marylebone. I just had to grit my teeth and push through, no time for a bad head...
Thanks to my humble Oyster card I didn't have to queue for several hours to get a tube ticket. The nice people of London Transport had decided to close both the Jubilee AND Victoria lines for all of this sunny summer weekend in London, causing widespread confusion amongst the tourists who had carefully planned their journeys around town. But I made it to meet Nats ok at Oxford St and then we soon left the main crazy streets for the more tranquil side streets. This is what I like about London, the bits behind the scenes.
Anyway, we arrived at 'Covergirl - London's premier photographic studios' (apparently) in good time and then our pampering session could begin. We had hair and make up done before a session in various outfits and poses in the studio. It did seem that every photographer was Eastern European, but they were all very friendly nonetheless. Apparently I am very photogenic and take great photos first time... (I knew I should have picked super-modelling as a career!!!) Afterwards we got to edit out the photos we didn't like. There was opportunity for air-brushing but none of that for us... oh no, we are naturals!
In any case, despite the ridiculous cost of buying photos, we managed to get 3 out of them. Result. To give you an idea, a set of 10 photos comes out at £600! However, I have to say that the guy was really nice and when I spun him my jobseekers allowance story, he didn't put any pressure on at all to buy any. So I did well to get some photos for free!
Later on, the big curls in my hair fell out leaving me with oddly straight hair, the make up took a lot of cleanser to remove and we were both totally exhausted from all that sitting around all day between shots. It must be hectic to be a real model, and you never realise how tiring it can be just to be so gorgeous!
