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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Sophie Heawood

I’d never fall into a Venice canal taking selfies – all mine are done in secret

Some of the tourists who ended up in a Venice canal last week.
Some of the tourists who ended up in a Venice canal last week. Photograph: ANSA

I mean, I’ll just come out and say it: it’s pretty tempting to laugh out loud at the tourists who fell off their gondola into the canal in Venice last week because they just wouldn’t stop taking selfies. Their gondolier had apparently asked them to sit down and quit all that dangerous posing, but they didn’t listen and toppled right in, overturning the boat and throwing him into the tentacles of the lagoon, too. The poor man then had to try to get his very upset customers out of the big sink – there’s a video of this online – and, well, let’s just say he’s a nobler man than I am, still trying to help them by this soaking point.

So it’s tempting indeed to laugh but, oh, I can’t, because my secret hobby is taking ridiculous selfies, too. Only I do it when nobody is looking, so they can’t judge me. Don’t you? Don’t you find a nice moment of sexy lighting in, er, a public lavatory, or a restaurant loo, or a lift, or a shop, or in the park with the dog, or in your friend’s kitchen when she has left the room – I mean, I could go on. The reason I take so many is because none of them ever turn out the way I think they will, or because someone else has had the audacity to get into the lift and ruin my private moment with my phone.

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