So what does Simon Jones actually look like?
Yes that is me in the 'half face' picture, but I'll agree that it really doesn't give much of an impression as to what I actually look like in 'every day life.' But then it wasn't supposed to.

Someone once said I had an amorphous face, an expression which had sent me clicking away to dictionary.com for an explanation. Of course from my point of view I am nearly always the same aside from the odd few shades of bottle blonde radically applied by enthusiastic trainee hair dressers in the salon below my apartment.

In response to the many readers who ask me what I look like I could have offered up with some carefully chosen 'publicity' style picture of me, something polished and cheesy like you might find on the back of a novel. But where's the fun in that? You want to see the face behind 'Meanwhile' right? Well then, lets start from the beginning:

1980 - 1983 The picture on the left was taken in a London photobooth and is the first in a series of four in which I began to laugh hysterically because the first flash really startled me. It was amusing to me as a young man who had never sat in a photobooth before. I distinctly recall that occasion. We were at Liverpool Street Station waiting for a delayed train to take us home and to kill time my friends decided I should spend fifty pence and have my picture taken. The middle picture was in another photo booth at Chelmsford bus station with my brother Peter (left). On the right I was flagrantly committing several fashion violations while taking a picture of my brother as he took a picture of me.


1986 - 1990 It is perhaps a sad fact that I can tell you that on the TV in the background of the picture on the left is a Ferrari at the San Marino Grand Prix in Imola. The picture was taken at the sixteenth birthday 'gathering' of my then girlfriend. She lived in a Vicarage so there was simply no possibility of a wild party. On the right I have just crossed the Scottish border my friend Mark Dawe in a chunky old Russian made Orange Lada that I purchased for one hundred and fifty pounds ahead of what was an epic road trip to the most northern tip of Scotland.


1991 - 1992
The realisation of a life long dream to live in America came in January 1992 just a few days after my twenty first birthday. On the left my friends Josh and Kevin pose with me by Josh's huge blue Chevvy truck that Josh once famously announced in some frustration that "it doesn't exactly stop on a dime you know!" At twenty one years old and being a huge U2 fan the trip to the nearby Mojave Desert to pose with guitars next to Joshua Trees had an almost a pilgrimage like importance for me. After leaving California it would be eleven years before I would once again see my very great friends Josh and Kevin. (Check out my Reality Radio show looking back on America 92')


1993 - 1994 After returning to England I decided to move away from my hometown in the south of England and move 'up north' to the Wirral peninsula between Liverpool and the rolling hills of North Wales. For all the pictures I have with me posing by a guitar I can still only play three chords. Long hair, long coats and dark glasses were the order of the day, a look that seemed to be a big hit with the fairer sex at the time. ;-)


1995 - 1997
In the mid nineties you wouldn't have often seen me without one of what became my trademark beany hats. In that time I lived in a small studio flat that backed onto Birkenhead Park. It was a simple little flat in a big old converted merchants house full of characters such as 'drunken Bob' and Peter who would use his top floor flat as a venue for his noisy band to practice. They would often have loud and animated discussions that would sometimes end in blows, especially if former conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was ever mentioned. It was a fun place to live and gave me many an anecdote to recount. (See 'Another night in Birkenhell.')


1998 - 2000
In 1998 I traveled to the East Coast of America for the first of many times. At the time I didn't have a video camera and, just as in 1992, I wanted to capture the trip so I recorded loads of material on a hand held tape cassette recorder and later compiled it as a Reality Radio show.


2001 - 2003 Sporting peroxide blonde hair I decided to see if blondes really do have more fun. Certainly I can report that it's a lot of fun to look at yourself in the mirror and see someone a little different looking back at you.


2004 - 2007 As I head into my mid thirties I'm struck by the fact that I don't old. I always used to think that these years would feel different, but I think it's no exaggeration to say that I am enjoying my life more now than ever before!