Portrait Of The Donkey As A Young...Reindeer?

Today started off quite well. The wind was minimal, the ice has been covered by a few centimetres of fresh snow and the sun actually made an appearance. We had our breakfast served in front of the barn so we could enjoy the token warmth and the woman said over her shoulder as she made for the house "this is Christmas photo day, so don't roll in anything horrible".

Photo day, I thought, hmmm, this might prove interesting. I envisioned someone like Cecil Beeton or Josef Karsh showing up with dignified seasonal props - an ermine cape or a few yards of red velvet. I would pose, resplendent against a snowy backdrop, captured for the ages as the ideal of what a festive donkey should look like. What a fool I was. I should know by now not to allow myself to be taken in by someone like the woman, whose bad taste is surpassed only by her feeble sense of humour.

Around noon she emerged from the house, laden down with all sorts of nonsensical looking items. I felt a strange foreboding. She proceeded to put something like a festive dunce cap on Doc's head, fastening it with her own hairclip because of Doc's extreme lack of mane hair. He was very pleased and mugged for the camera like the Grade A ham that he is. She then fastened a ridiculous badge to Molly's forelock - you can read the message for yourselves in her photo. I find it highly distasteful and refuse to give it any room on this page. Molly just smirked and said she hoped it could be read as far away as Nevada. That girl does NOT need to be advertising her charms to the world at large.

And then...oh the indignity. Jack and I were sunning against the cedar hedge in the front paddock when she tracked us down and began affixing what appeared to be comic antlers to our heads. The best Jack could manage was a one ear forward pose, saying something about not biting the hand that feeds him. I left hastily but she caught me in front of the barn and put BOTH sets of antlers on my head. I just hope my new friends, especially the Regional Dean at the Anglican church, don't see me thus covered in shame and embarrassment and antlers.

So, no dignified elder statesmen of the professional photographers guild to take our portraits, just herself with her modern excuse for a camera. If she's going to make me look like a circus freak, she might as well invite Diane Arbus over for the day. The woman just laughed and said it's too bad Ansel Adams is no longer with us because he was used to taking photos of large geographical features - and then she looked pointedly at my waistline. I forbade her to publish these travesties - you can see how far that got me.