First attempts with new toy...

So: I bought myself a cheap toy camera.

I've been struggling for a while with the frustration of not being able easily to get photographs in a form that was electronic and hence uploadable.  I found I could order copies of my films on cd rom, but the cost of that mounts up, to say the least, and I realised that fairly soon I would have spent the price of a bottom-of-the-range tinny digital camera, given just how bloody cheap they are getting these days.

So I took myself to Boots - the big Boots in Westfield (Westfield shopping centre, aka The Good Ship Axiom from "Wall-E") - and waited ten minutes until the chap who knew about cameras was free, and I bought one.

Chap-who-knew-about-cameras was charming and enthusiastic and an all-round nice friendly guy.  It was rather like being served by a young Will Smith, only from west London not the USA.  He really did know about cameras, too, and he gave me lots of advice, talked me through all the features, and was perfectly happy to accept it as I worked my way round to buying one of the cheapest ones they sold.

So now I have a little toy.  I've begun trying to get used to it and to experiment with what it will and won't do well.  Initial examples of things it seemingly won't do well are above, but there are some slightly better things to come...  And it's early days yet.

After buying a camera I fled in shock to the tapas bar in one of the huge atria, and had gambas al ajillo and a glass of tinto di verano, yum, good food, yum; and then treated myself to the dvd of the director's cut of "Bladerunner", in a sale, some sensible black cotton trousers, likewise in a sale, and a packet of halva.  Yum again.  I felt like the last of the big spenders by then; new hardware and trousers and a dvd and lunch out?  Shocking.

I'll post some more of the photos in a bit.

Thursday before Samhain

I realise looking back over this that my enthusiasm has slackened somewhat over time. I suspect this is normal, but still a little embarrassing to reflect on how madly keen I was at first to strew my thoughts on the web. However life goes on and I'd always rather be busy than bored. I've been doing a bit more printmaking for greetings cards, and some more sewing - I'm now onto a shirt large enough for the late Luciano Pavarotti, which I am brutally cutting to make a shirt that fits me. I am rather enjoying this big clothes sewing binge. At times I wonder if I should take it further and run a business on the side producing interesting new clothes from old. There are so many wonderful things in charity shops, sitting doing nothing and getting dusty hems - beautiful fabrics crying out to be re-imagined, dated styles crying out to be pruned and jazzed up. What with charity shop buys and old things from my own cupboards, at the moment I have enough hand sewing jobs to last me all winter. But if I were to buy a sewing machine, that would mean I could whip through them in a few evenings...
I've also been having some totally non-creative but interesting fun with an online dating agency... A couple of guys have messaged me but nothing more; all rather bizarre. But I'm tired of waiting for interesting men to surface near me; face it, there aren't many at Kew and those there are seem to be either already taken, weird, or very weird.
Trying to describe oneself without sounding either big-headed or terrifyingly insecure and self-deprecating is tough going. At least I have a few pictures of myself - the same ones I have posted here at some point (Imogen the student radical beating her doumbek on a demo, Imogen on board a sleeper to Barcelona, Imogen looking quizzical in an orange suntop, Imogen drunk but very happy at her graduation ball.) I'd love a decent current picture of me on my bike, just to counter the decidedly indoor feel of most of those. When one has an old-fashioned 35 ml film camera and a mobile 'phone that predates mobiles having built-in cameras, getting photographs in an electronic form is surprisingly difficult.