It Must Be Love
Unrelated to the photo, but I thought I'd share something that happened today. It's because I'm a sharer. In addition to the job-stress-relief that comes from whipping the camera out I had a duty to perform this lunchtime; we have a housewarming/birthday to attend this weekend in Basingstoke which necessitated a brief stop in Hotel Chocolat to pick up some goodies. I was accompanied by my colleague. He's male just like me (in case you've never caught on). This will become important. I picked up some gift chocolates for the weekend and some chocolates for personal consumption too (because it's the law) and then proceeded to pay for them at the till. A very friendly woman attended and offered the pair of us some fruit-filled, white chocolate hearts to let melt on our tongues while we waited for the card reader to read my card. Some small talk about chocolates and signing up for emails proceeded along with a few grins and nods and lies about already having signed up. "Ooh! Mojito truffles!" said the woman suddenly, picking up some of the treats I'd picked out for our own use. "These are lovely!" she confided. "We certainly hope so!" I replied with a smile. "Your wife will really like them," said my colleague. Loudly. Deeply. I glanced at him. He looked a little… puffed up. We left the shop – after the transaction had gone through, of course – and I gave my colleague that look that says "what in the name of all that's unholy was all that about?" without using words; it does use an eyebrow and enough muscles to raise one side of the upper lip. "She thought we were a couple!" he hissed. "So?" was my laughter-accompanied reply, but in addition to the laughter there was also regret; oh, the missed fun that could have been had with a sexuality-threatened colleague if only I'd spotted the signs earlier. But I know for next time. Google+: View post on...
Love Books?
Dorothy does. She's so pleased with her new purchase she feels the need to text her friend Mary back at the office. "I've picked up a new book." Dorothy doesn't go in for all that text-speak nonsense. "GR8 WOT?" comes the reply. Mary doesn't share Dorothy's stance on sending messages using full words. Or correctly-spelt ones. And her phone needs a firmware update to fix an annoying issue that only permits uppercase characters. "50 Shades of Grey…" is the reply from Dorothy. She glances nervously at the bag in which her book is located and then around her to ensure nobody has seen over her shoulder at the phone's small screen. There's a man with a camera on the bench over the road but it seems unlikely he'd be able to get a decent shot of her from there. A trill from the phone indicates that Mary's replied. "GOT IT ITS SH1T LOL". Mary's probably not laughing out loud which annoys Dorothy – one should never claim to be doing something that one isn't, after all – but not as much as the missing apostrophe, punctuation, and self-censorship. Dorothy smirks, though, and taps away swiftly on the keypad in her hands. "… the pop-up edition!" she continues. By way of response there's nothing but silence and Dorothy wanders off to find somewhere private for a bit of a read. Dorothy loves books. Just not very good ones. Google+: View post on...
Rejoice
Thanks to Colchester Camera Repair Service (http://camera-repair.co.uk/ – autostarting video, grumble, grumble) I have got my Canon 5D Mark II back. For around £230 inclusive of VAT that got me a replacement shutter unit fitted as well as a full clean of sensor, mirror, etc. and delivery via UPS. I would have got my camera back last week had the snow not caused chaos (I can't really complain about that, though, as it got me a day off work). I would have got my camera back early this week had UPS not forgotten to put it on their van when they went out for delivery (which kinda makes a mockery of the whole tracking service if the website says it's out for delivery but it later transpires it's still in the warehouse). And I would have got my camera back the next day had I been in when they tried to deliver but I wasn't and had to rearrange delivery to my work the day after that. Importantly: I've got the camera back now. I decided to put the camera through its paces and popped along to the Bishop's Palace Gardens in Chichester so that I could play around with macro shots, wide shots, long exposures to test for sensor dust, and so on. I'm happy to report that all is well in the world once more. There wasn't a lot of life in the gardens but you don't need a lot of life to take a nice photo. Google+: View post on...
Under Cover
I dunno. You wait ages for a photograph and then two come along at once. It was snowing this morning on the way to work. As this is England that meant I had plenty of time to observe its prettiness as I sat there inching along in the traffic jam that had suddenly formed because absolutely nobody in this country appears to know what to do when snowflakes turn up on the scene. It was lovely looking at the inch or so of snow that formed along the side of the dual carriageway, and the boughs of the trees looked truly beautiful. I was genuinely looking forward to getting out at lunch and take some shots. Did I mention this is England? Well, this is England. The snow had gone and rain had replaced it all within a few hours. Arse. Google+: View post on...
Confusion
I still don't have my camera back from the repairers but +urszula masilela was apparently missing me, so since I've been taking my old 350D out at lunchtimes (with very varying levels of success) here's something to fill the gap… They looked one way up the street, then the other, then back again. He looked up one street, she looked down another. They glanced up and down. Brows were furrowed. And then I caught their eyes. "Problem?" I asked. "All these leopards!" the man tutted. He resumed looking confused and I decided to join him in that state. "Leopards?" I asked. I made a mental note to stop asking one-word questions. The woman shook her head in irritation as a rivulet of water ran down her temple and cheek. The man grunted and pointed into the sky and then at the ground. He shook himself. "Leopards!" he said. "We call that stuff rain around here," I offered helpfully. A perplexed glance was shared between the damp couple. "Never heard of it," said the man. "Do you call those candles?" he asked, looking up and then squinting awkwardly as a drop splashed into his eyeball. "Nope. Those are called clouds. Everyone calls them clouds because they're clouds. Candles are something else entirely." "Not where we're from," he replied. His companion busied herself looking around anxiously. "You're still looking a little confused," I remarked. "We've been here ages and there hasn't been a single sense of impending doom." "That's the sort of thing you step onto and it takes you from one place to another?" They nodded and I saw a bit of a smile. "Well, at least a sense of impending doom is the same in this weird place," the man said. I decided not to correct him and instead led the pair of them away from the centre of the pedestrianised precinct and to the nearest bus stop. At least, that's what I told them. It was actually a tree. I can only assume they're still there. Google+: View post on...
The Pie Piper
Once upon a time, in the city of Chichester which sat in West Sussex not far from the Hampshire border, there was a plague. It was not a plague such as where you might find your neighbours coughing up blood and falling down dead in the street, oh no! This was a plague of the feathered variety; pigeons, to be precise. Pigeons were everywhere. On the ground, in the trees, in the buildings, even in people's homes. And the people of Chichester were not best pleased. "We are not best pleased," they agreed at a meeting to decide how to deal with the pigeons but that was all they could initially agree upon. Some people suggested eating the pigeons but others argued that to do so would be to eat everything that the pigeons ate too and this quite turned a number of stomachs present. Some people suggested shooting the pigeons but guns and bows and arrows were in short supply as Chichester was a civilised place and hitherto had suffered no need of such barbaric instruments. As the meeting drew to a close with no resolution in sight the people of Chichester were more glum than they had been before and they stared forlornly at the doors of the meeting hall, dreading the infestation of pigeons into which they would need to venture. Just then, the doors swung open and in stepped a woman with long, blonde hair, dressed in black, and wearing a bag across her body. "I can rid your city of pigeons," she declared. "But it will cost you!" "Anything!" the people cried. The woman nodded and walked away. From her bag she started removing miniature Cornish pasties and discarding them on the ground and everyone saw that the pigeons flocked to fight over whatever tasty morsels they could wrestle. The blonde woman wandered through the city and continued to drop food for the vermin and in this manner she led all the pigeons outside Chichester's walls and down to the canal. The people followed from a distance, hardly daring to believe their eyes. One by one each and every pigeon hopped, flew, and fought its way into the canal waters desperate to get every last crumb of the pasties that floated on its surface. And every pigeon was attacked and killed by the rats that lived nearby. "I have rid you of your pigeons," said the blonde woman. "Now I wish to set up a store selling cheap scarves in your main street." The people of Chichester were aghast. "Cheap scarves!" they cried. "That's far too common for Chichester! We won't do it!" And...
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