There's a strange woman who's been following a few of my tour buddies and I around Brighton all day taking photographs - of us. That is, her rather large camera lense is usually pointed in our direction, it follows our movements up and down the street and she's been seen feebly attempting to hide behind poles and bushes if we move in her direction. Some would perhaps refer to her as 'paparazzi' but as we've yet to see any of the alleged photos she's been snatching surface in any form of media, perhaps she's just a random lady taking photos of our group for fun.
Some of the girls believe the sneaky snapper is the same woman who was 'papping' us out the front of our hotel in London the other day as we were boarding the bus. I've also heard from some of the boys that she was photographing them at training in recent days, but to the best of our knowledge she is not an official accredited photographer. It's funny, when I was younger I always thought it would be pretty cool to be chased by the paparazzi even just once for a bit of fun, but it is the weirdest, most intrusive feeling now that I've had a taste of it this week.
So far, she's taken pics of Kyly pushing Romy around in the pram. She snapped my sister and I downing our takeaway Costa coffees as we walked around the Brighton shopping district. Little Madi was sprung coming back into the hotel after her morning run. And Mel's gone into hiding, refusing to exit the hotel until the little silver vehicle she's been spotted in is nowhere to be seen. Unlike celebrities who (some may argue) 'court' this kind of activity, my tour buddies and I - even the cricketers themselves - have never sought this kind of attention, nor do we particularly appreciate it.
The next time she's around, I'm going to go all Adrian Grenier on her and chase her down for a pic (if you haven't seen Grenier's documentary 'Teenage Paparrazo' it's well worth watching). And if there's any chance that she's reading this blog post (who am I kidding - my mother is my only captive audience) we'd ask her to give us a heads up that we're about to be photographed. It's just a common courtesy isn't it?
