not through choice

Hooray for John Lewis. Despite the muppet on the camera desk not understanding anything about cameras he says they will price-match. That'll be Monday sorted if any of the proper camera shops have run out.

Hooray for students: there were a bunch of them standing around the Mercat Cross jabbering away in their special voices and possibly waiting for one of the mystery-laden hammy walking tours to begin. I glanced over at them to see if any were receptive to glaring and mind-control requests to shut up and noticed the lighting on the building behind them. There was a mysterious car parked under the mysterious light but as I approached (and as soon as I took my camera from my bag) it suddenly sparked up and sped suspiciously away. The scene still had enough mysteriousness to be worth capturing.

I did have a look for my big tripod the other night but I can't find it in any of the places I feel it should be; another casualty of decoration and reorganisation. I'm half considering taking it on holiday at the end of the month so that I don't just generate a predictable cardsworth of low-level night-time shots. I do intend to pack extremely lightly this time and expect I can squeeze in a 2-kilo crappy aluminium wobblepod too. Over the years I am improving in travel-efficiency and only took twice as much stuff as I needed to Barcelona in October. The problem is that staying in hotels rather than tents means that the rucksack has so much more tempting space in...