Say Cheese

As a young and thoroughly uncool student teacher, there are a few tasks at which I'm supposed to excel in: sitting backwards on a chair, pretending to be one with my students and being the one goon in the staffroom capable of utilizing this century's technology. Of these, from this week on I have yet to master the last, because the camera on my mobile phone has given up and surrendered the white flag. I'm unsure why this has happened and how long this absenteeism is set to last. For the past three days this issue has played heavily on my mind and as it turns out I am losing out on a lot more than just the optical instrument.

1. Celebrity encounters. You break your camera and all sense of logic exits your life. So what if I have never ran into a celebrity in the last twenty odd years, I will run into multiple international stars in the next few days and no one will believe me because I lack any proof to seal the deal. I keep imagining bumping into Beyonce in a supermarket, or even worse her ill-mannered younger sister Solange Knowles in a hotel lift and losing all that vital evidence worth selling to the media when she starts to flare-up.

2. Flawless selfies. I refuse to accept that anyone in this day and age hasn't attempted the infamous selfie at least once. It has become a way of life for the egotistical mortals of this world. I'll admit it isn't a pastime I partake in too often but now 'cameraless' how am I going to please the Vanity Gods? When I'm looking respectable on a day I don't plan to venture outside the house, how shall I ensure my allure and style don't go unnoticed? How will I survive?

Wannabe hipster? Not without the black and white filter.

3. Snapchat. Snapchat is perfect for the people in your life you wish to keep in contact with, but more than ten seconds worth of data is just intolerable. Many of us enrolled because we like talking to good-looking, attractive people but lack the desire or appetite to sustain a provocative conversation with them. This app is perfect because it requires little to no dialogue, in silence and endless beauty there is communication. Without a camera, this app is useless.

4. Comical Photographs. As the seconds, minutes, hours and days have passed I dread to think of all the amusing opportunities I have missed out on. Chances are this week I'll run into a dog driving a school bus, a free-spirited grandmother skateboarding and Mary McAleese picking her nose down an avenue in Galway city and they will be nothing but an unpleasant memory.

5. Home made music videos. When it's pouring rain some night and I am on the train parked on a window seat looking out at it, without my own video recorder who is going to document my adaptation of Adele's Someone Like You? Walking down a sunny street, feeling on top form, how will I videotape my rendition of Pharrell's Happy? If I was to write an award winning self-penned number-one single, how will I record the music video? Hire a producer? Sign with a record label? Borrow a friend's camera? I think not.