Here's the latest in our new series of blogs by Glasgow students.

Ryan Bounagui is a self-confessed news junkie, part-time mentor, part-time pie producer, full-time madman. Never too far from a pub.

 

You see that wee picture of me above this? That picture where I look about 13 and somewhere in between smug and lost.

That picture kills me. When reading my columns on this website (just to remind myself it’s real) the cringe comes before the pride.

There’s something about that picture, and, apparently, there’s something about my face.

It was on a sunny morning through in Edinburgh last week when I became certain I’ve got ‘one of those faces’.

I was working at the launch of a company strategy (heart-pounding stuff I tell you).

Annabelle Ewing, the Scottish Government Minister, was there to mark the launch and add some of that political panache.

Half of these events are about shaking hands, and as she eventually gets to my hand her facial expressions turn to a genuine mix of surprise and what I could swear was a tinge of horror.

Convinced she knew me from somewhere, she gave me this look as though I resurrected a dark and distant memory; as if I’d run over her dog a few years back or deliberately burst her grandson’s ball.

It was as she walked away I stood there and thought, ‘that confirms it, definitely got one of those faces’.

My facial theory, a theory that doesn’t actually have a base or a point to it other than it’s ‘one of those’, isn’t just based on haunted SNP ministers.

There have been a few times now my face seems to have triggered a memory circuit in the brain of someone I’ve never met.

A few years ago, down at the caravans in Berwick-upon-Tweed, I met a guy who was convinced – utterly convinced - he knew me.

I was standing there chatting up what turned out to be his sister when he approached me.

After realising he wasn’t looking to tango, I settled and got into conversation with him.

A minute of chit-chat later he suddenly becomes solid in his belief that I was his cellmate in Polmont, and that my name was Barry.

‘Ayeee remember, we used to have some laugh in that joint it was a canter eh?’

I didn’t know what was more frightening. The fact I was stood chatting up an ex-inmate’s sister inside his stab radius, or the sheer level of conviction this guy had that we once shared a cell.

Back in the glorious, golden student days I’d often be walking across campus when someone would either say hello or stop to talk. I’d have no idea who they were and had to rely on smiles and ‘mate’, ‘bud’ and ‘man’ to disguise the fact I had no idea what their name was.

If it was a girl then I just prayed politeness was enough.

If you ever read this, Annabelle, it wasn’t me. It was probably Barry.