Patisserie.

Brownie 127, 35mm Kodak BW400CN.

Woke up feeling no different today for being quarter of a century old. How disappointing! Mum and Dad were up before us today and we ate breakfast together before Mum and Dad decided to go out for a walk themselves and leave me to get ready at a more leisurely pace. M was out sorting a few things in his workshop, so I had a long shower and lay on the sofa with my book until he got back.

We met up with Mum and Dad for a wander on the beachfront and lunch at Sand Dollar in the afternoon. A lovely day with the weather cold but clear and the sea sparkling. We even saw dolphins; Mum was delighted!

I’d watched a tutorial on how to load 35mm film into my Brownie 127, so this was my 1st attempt. The 127mm film was super-expensive on every internet site I checked, with Fotokemika stopping production of the Efke brand (the last 127mm film to be produced) in 2012. It involved a lot of sellotape and two pairs of hands – Dad’s and mine – and I ran off a whole roll today. This was the only photo that came out (kind of): Mum looking in the window of a French patisserie shop on Thistle Street. The fact that only one photo came out is probably due to my cack-handed attempts to unload the film with no auto-rewind. M and I locked ourselves in the only light-tight room in our house (the downstairs loo) and wrestled with it for ages before resorting to cutting out the film with scissors! I then managed to lean on the light switch and briefly fill the room with dazzling light for about a second – enough to ruin the rest of the photos. D’oh! I’ll learn for next time.

Played Scrabble with Mum this evening and cooked venison wellington for everyone, which went down very very well!