Usually it's shopping or camera but I had only a letter to post and two things to pick up from the supermarket so I ambled into town in the sun with an empty backpack on my back and a camera on my front. (By the time I came out of the supermarket the backpack was, as always, stuffed full and very heavy in some completely ineffective magical-thinking warding off having to come again soon.)

So I ambled home again, laden, past the building site. It's much less interesting now that the demolition is finished and four-storey metal frames are going up. There was little to engage me except an amiable site-guard with an animated face, an unkempt beard and only four teeth who wanted to talk with me about what he thought was my film camera. He doesn't have time for photography - he's going to take it up when he retires. A bit further on I came across an even larger beard, Father-Christmas-white over a bright red T-shirt, owned by a man with a walking frame. He asked me whether I'd taken any good pictures. So we got talking and I learnt that he used to earn his living as a photographer (neither journalism nor advertising was as far as I got), that he still takes pictures and that he has a lens, ooh, this long.

Too late, I realised I should have asked for portraits.