The Fortieth Day
There was something faintly biblical about all of this. It was the fortieth day of the new year, and so far (with the exception of the seven we spent in Alicante during January), every single one of the forty had brought rain. Sometimes a persistent drizzle, occasionally a series of passing showers, and more often than was good for us, a wall to wall day of endless downpour. Meanwhile, I was being treated to exclusive views of the wider world beyond these shores. Mike was parading along the penguin highway in Antarctica and marvelling at the mountains of Patagonia. John was swimming with sharks in the Maldives. Not the type of sharks that would result in him having to count his remaining limbs afterwards, I might add. Black Fin Reef Sharks if you want to reassure yourself before booking that desert island holiday. It all got too much, and this pair of itchy feet needed scratching. So I span the globe, closed my eyes and shoved in a pin. Obviously I’d have to have another go if it pointed to anywhere the locals might be hostile. Camborne, for example, is particularly edgy in the evenings. Where would we be going? Kuala Lumpur perhaps? Winnipeg or Valparaiso? Nope, not quite.
Ok, so it didn’t happen quite like that. There were no pins and no globes, no matter how enchanting the idea might be. But for some quite convoluted reasons that I’m not going to trouble the reader with here, we were on our way to our nation’s capital. No, not Truro, Brian. That’s where I go to visit the dentist and my teeth were fine last time he checked them. Today, on the fortieth day of rain and foul tempest, the train was taking us to London for a few days of metropolitan meandering. The Somerset Levels, famously prone to winter flooding, looked like an inland sea, with miles and miles of flooded fields filling the flat lands on either side of the train window. It was a sight that was beautiful and tragically prophetic all at once. Would the rain ever stop? Might it be dry in London? Could we hope for just a few days’ break from this eternal deluge?
And as we were set on a course of sightseeing, shows, and in my case, a Premier League football match on Tuesday evening, photography wasn’t on the agenda at all. Not that the capital lacks for subjects of course. Some of you have shown me just how photogenic London can be. And while I may have cause to return soon, and hopefully take the camera with me, today wasn’t that day. Besides which, try and take the kind of camera that you and I own into a major football stadium and you’ll be turned away at the entrance gate. But it was in the minutes before setting off as I went through the house, switching off electrical sockets and checking windows that I noticed the little Olympus, sitting emptily on its tiny tripod, untouched and unappreciated since I took it swimming in the Red Sea over a year earlier. Yes, the waterproof camera, made for snorkelling, and ironically appropriate for the conditions at hand. Designed to slip into a coat pocket with ease, with an agreeable enough focal range and entirely permissible inside the stadium, I could carry it with me and not be encumbered - or ejected. And while it might be a bit lacking in the megapixel department, it does at least shoot in raw. All of these thoughts probably raced through my brain as I pulled the charger from a nearby drawer, checked the SD card was loaded, and popped the camera into my rucksack.
On the first morning, we went for a stroll around the local neighbourhood. Down to the Thames Barrage and then back towards the Excel Centre over the footbridge above the Royal Victoria Dock. For a while it managed not to rain. Just for an hour or so at least. And while almost six weeks of tempest may have brought their tribulations, here they added a silvery kind of softness to the light over the towers of Canary Wharf, a mile or two to the west.
Well of course this camera has its limitations. Put it in aperture priority and rather than gradually creeping up the dial, it lurches through the numbers quite alarmingly. Any instances of pixel peeping (Steve!) will be taken seriously and reported to the proper authorities. Best just to appreciate the sense of what we were seeing here rather than diving into fine details that don’t exist. The old adage stands that the best camera is the one that’s sitting in a box three hundred miles away at home. Still, this one did its job well enough and rendered the scene in a way that matched the quiet palette before us. Next to no work needed at all in fact. It’s all here; the thrusting commerce, the tourism, and a nod to the old industry that once saw this place humming with activity of a different kind.
As I write, it’s the forty-sixth day of the new year. And guess what. It’s still raining. Still biblical. I’m wondering whether to repurpose the contents of the log store in the garden and start building an ark.
The Fortieth Day
There was something faintly biblical about all of this. It was the fortieth day of the new year, and so far (with the exception of the seven we spent in Alicante during January), every single one of the forty had brought rain. Sometimes a persistent drizzle, occasionally a series of passing showers, and more often than was good for us, a wall to wall day of endless downpour. Meanwhile, I was being treated to exclusive views of the wider world beyond these shores. Mike was parading along the penguin highway in Antarctica and marvelling at the mountains of Patagonia. John was swimming with sharks in the Maldives. Not the type of sharks that would result in him having to count his remaining limbs afterwards, I might add. Black Fin Reef Sharks if you want to reassure yourself before booking that desert island holiday. It all got too much, and this pair of itchy feet needed scratching. So I span the globe, closed my eyes and shoved in a pin. Obviously I’d have to have another go if it pointed to anywhere the locals might be hostile. Camborne, for example, is particularly edgy in the evenings. Where would we be going? Kuala Lumpur perhaps? Winnipeg or Valparaiso? Nope, not quite.
Ok, so it didn’t happen quite like that. There were no pins and no globes, no matter how enchanting the idea might be. But for some quite convoluted reasons that I’m not going to trouble the reader with here, we were on our way to our nation’s capital. No, not Truro, Brian. That’s where I go to visit the dentist and my teeth were fine last time he checked them. Today, on the fortieth day of rain and foul tempest, the train was taking us to London for a few days of metropolitan meandering. The Somerset Levels, famously prone to winter flooding, looked like an inland sea, with miles and miles of flooded fields filling the flat lands on either side of the train window. It was a sight that was beautiful and tragically prophetic all at once. Would the rain ever stop? Might it be dry in London? Could we hope for just a few days’ break from this eternal deluge?
And as we were set on a course of sightseeing, shows, and in my case, a Premier League football match on Tuesday evening, photography wasn’t on the agenda at all. Not that the capital lacks for subjects of course. Some of you have shown me just how photogenic London can be. And while I may have cause to return soon, and hopefully take the camera with me, today wasn’t that day. Besides which, try and take the kind of camera that you and I own into a major football stadium and you’ll be turned away at the entrance gate. But it was in the minutes before setting off as I went through the house, switching off electrical sockets and checking windows that I noticed the little Olympus, sitting emptily on its tiny tripod, untouched and unappreciated since I took it swimming in the Red Sea over a year earlier. Yes, the waterproof camera, made for snorkelling, and ironically appropriate for the conditions at hand. Designed to slip into a coat pocket with ease, with an agreeable enough focal range and entirely permissible inside the stadium, I could carry it with me and not be encumbered - or ejected. And while it might be a bit lacking in the megapixel department, it does at least shoot in raw. All of these thoughts probably raced through my brain as I pulled the charger from a nearby drawer, checked the SD card was loaded, and popped the camera into my rucksack.
On the first morning, we went for a stroll around the local neighbourhood. Down to the Thames Barrage and then back towards the Excel Centre over the footbridge above the Royal Victoria Dock. For a while it managed not to rain. Just for an hour or so at least. And while almost six weeks of tempest may have brought their tribulations, here they added a silvery kind of softness to the light over the towers of Canary Wharf, a mile or two to the west.
Well of course this camera has its limitations. Put it in aperture priority and rather than gradually creeping up the dial, it lurches through the numbers quite alarmingly. Any instances of pixel peeping (Steve!) will be taken seriously and reported to the proper authorities. Best just to appreciate the sense of what we were seeing here rather than diving into fine details that don’t exist. The old adage stands that the best camera is the one that’s sitting in a box three hundred miles away at home. Still, this one did its job well enough and rendered the scene in a way that matched the quiet palette before us. Next to no work needed at all in fact. It’s all here; the thrusting commerce, the tourism, and a nod to the old industry that once saw this place humming with activity of a different kind.
As I write, it’s the forty-sixth day of the new year. And guess what. It’s still raining. Still biblical. I’m wondering whether to repurpose the contents of the log store in the garden and start building an ark.