Portrait of a lady

Dr Saumya Balsari reflects on the hologram of the Queen, marriage and Mrs Berlusconi, and school uniforms.

The Queen’s latest portrait is contained in a three-dimensional hologram. Chris Levine, a holographic specialist, took approximately 10,000 digital photographs for the project. The Queen was reportedly informed that posing for the hologram was rather like sitting for a passport photograph.

An unfortunate use of simile - the passport photograph at a supermarket booth evokes strong memories. Usually alerted to disaster by a sudden damp plop issuing from the machine slot, the commoner then views his uncommonly wooden face in horror. ("That can’t be me, I don’t look like that.") AE Housman empathised even before the invention of an automated passport photo service. In a letter dated 1922, he wrote, "The photograph is not quite true to my own notion of my gentleness and sweetness of nature, but neither perhaps to my external appearance."

The Queen, it appears, was not entirely enchanted, either. Indeed, she remarked that she looked like "an old woman lost in a wood". An intriguing choice of words - elderly women do not wander off on their own in woods that are scarcer than Asda stores. In fact, English woods are harder to find than teenage schoolgirls with skirts well below the knee. What would a senior citizen be doing in a wood in the first place? Picking bluebells? Getting away from the grandchildren for a quiet puff? Wasn’t it youthful Little Red Riding Hood who got lost in the woods, or was it Hansel and Gretel?

The piece titled Equanimity, has been commissioned by the island of Jersey to commemorate the 800th anniversary of its allegiance to the throne. If one were truly lost in the woods and without the trail of digestive crumbs, there would be little else to do but to display equanimity until the woodcutter or seriously deranged backpacker arrived to raise the alarm (levels). Sustained levels of equanimity would, of course, depend on whether the woodcutter arrived at all. Or whether he teamed up with the seriously deranged backpacker.

Book on marriage
Lingering doubts about an enduring Italian connection with India will be dispelled among all desis after the latest revelations of Mrs Berlusconi, formerly Veronica Lario and present wife of Italy's richest and most powerful man. According to her biography Tendenza Veronica published this week, married life is no dolce vita. Mrs B is making a fuss about Mr B not making a fuss. Over her, that is. Mr Berlusconi apparently talks incessantly on the telephone even during meals (an endearing desi habit). Among other things, this probably means he never hears her say “Please pass the olive oil”. He never takes her away on holiday (desi wives are always sent on holiday, and only to the same city on the Indian subcontinent). Mr Berlusconi also sends countless red roses to unspecified recipients – unspecified to Mrs Berlusconi, that is. The desi male, however, would rather send his pennies to his pocket.

Fuss over uniform
Sometimes it is the shades of grey that matter more than the black. A teenager was suddenly turned away from a GCSE Science examination by his school in the West Midlands because his trousers were grey instead of black. He arrived for the examination in the same pair of greying trousers that he had worn throughout the school year and when sitting other GCSEs. According to his mother, “...the trousers were black when we bought them but they have faded naturally because they've been washed so many times.” I suspect the black-now-grey trousers were mistakenly washed in an Indian detergent. You know the kind... saphedi... baarbaar... lagataar.

Changing from grey into black for a boy is probably easier than going from short skirts to trousers if you are a girl at a high school near Ipswich. Explaining the move towards trousers as the new uniform from September, the chairman of the school governors said, "Parents might see their daughter go to school in one skirt but they change to another, shorter one, at school or they roll up the top to make them look shorter. Some are practically pelmets.”

Auntyji with the Lalita Pawar spectacles says: Girl in small skirt is always big flirt. She also says a skirt should not be a pelmet, but a curtain.

(Saumya Balsari is the author of a forthcoming comic novel, and wrote a play for Kali Theatre Company's Futures last year. She is currently writing a second novel, another play and multicultural stories for children. She holds a doctorate and works in London as a journalist.)